As the saying goes, “two points doesn’t make a trend.” We have to divine the future of the industry by looking at the moves being taken by the players, and only in their totality does a story emerge of the direction things are going.

JP Morgan 2023

We learned of several significant organizational restructures, executive changes, and acquisitions and mergers at JP Morgan in mid-January, including specifically:

•  CinCor Pharma, acquired by Astra Zeneca for $1.8 billion;
•  Albireo Pharma, purchased by Ipsen for almost $1 billion; and
•  Amryt Pharma, acquired by Chiesi Farmaceutici for $1.48 billion.

They had stock prices in some cases more than double due to the acquisitions.

Evaluate (Norstella) predicted in their Vantage report, the 10 fastest-growth companies as: Novo Nordisk, Astra Zeneca, Eli Lilly, BMS, J&J, Amgen, CSL, Novartis, Grifols, and Daiichi Sankyo.

CDMO Partnerships

Partnerships with CDMOs continue to be strong and growing in most regions. You’ll notice that the very who’s who list above makes liberal use of CDMOs for their work. At the same time, mergers and acquisitions in the CxO sector (CROs, CDMOs, CMOs) continue to be very vigorous. CDMO trends include moving the industry’s appetite forward with successful novel therapy development and manufacturing, including producing many of the 37 FDA-approved small molecule and biologics therapies in 2022.

Some trends that the CDMO sector is moving towards with industry is reducing barriers to entry, providing more turnkey solutions, enticing sponsor companies by doing a better job of risk management and absorption, keeping current with molecule and technology trends, and keeping a keen eye on strong talent.

Talent Shortages

Very topically in the past several months is that talent shortages are moving to the forefront of executives’ minds. Accenture published a survey in October 2022 in which they found that “talent” was identified as a significant driver of the industry for the future, and had impacts on companies’ direct ability to operate, as well as their costs and efficiencies.

It’s as simple as this: Talent shortages beget operational shortfalls. Work gets done by people. And without enough or the right people, it doesn’t get done. Talent shortfalls also threaten to stifle innovation, as companies can’t “self actualize” successfully if they’re just trying to keep their heads above water from a talent perspective. Even amidst an era in which AI and robotics makes the public think that humans’ impact and influence at work will be minimized in the near future (it won’t). The ability to have the right people in the right roles at the right time makes for a continuous interesting challenge in the industry (and all industries, for that matter). Unemployment in the U.S. remains low at the time of writing this, at 3.5%, though most of the executives I’ve spoken with in the past month have said that it feels like talent shortages are everywhere, and the right people for certain roles are just unavailable.

The industry continues to leverage talent acquisition teams, as well as contract staffing firms to meet their ever-changing and rigorous demands for expertise. If you find yourself in this situation, reach out for help; these problems are ubiquitous, but have been solved—so there’s no reason to feel as if you’re alone in the battle. As McKinsey coined in 1997, there is a “war for talent,” and it was then, as it is now, a strategic business challenge, and perhaps still the biggest driver of performance. Companies address this war to varying degrees of success, but it isn’t a “solved” issue. Part of the reason is because of the fluidity that exists with human workers; the psychological and sociological factors which make the “soft science” in some sense one of the “hardest” sciences to crack.

Industry Movement

As CDMOs and CMOs continue to grow the industry, cell and gene therapies (CGTs) will continue to proliferate as they brand their mark on human history. New modalities such as CGTs and mRNA vaccine technology have increased from 11 to 21 percent of the drug development pipeline, which is the fastest growth ever seen in the sector. In addition, AI/ML is proving to be more-and-more valuable for drug pipeline development and clinical imaging technologies, while real-world data and evidence (RWD/RWE) are becoming more of a “thing.”

CDMOs and contract talent have the novel and enviable perspective of being actively engaged in the midst of these changes and gaining expertise that some of the even larger sponsor organizations can’t and don’t encounter on an as-regular basis during their operations. In this way, “those who know” are often very much found externally, which organizations must seek out for their unique needs. 

Ben Locwin is a healthcare executive and writes the Clinically Speaking column. He has participated in both the war for talent, having hired hundreds of employees over the years, as well as CDMO partnerships both from the CDMO side of the equation as well as the sponsor side.