What are “3 Key Trends” shaping the CDMO industry in 2024 and beyond? Piramal Pharma Solutions’ chief patient centricity officer and chief commercial officer, Stuart Needlemen, shares his thoughts with Contract Pharma.

Integrated services
There has been an overall move to programs that are more strategically integrated, utilizing multiple sites within a CDMO’s organization to address various stages of development and manufacturing. With integrated projects, communication is simplified because the sponsor is not dealing with multiple CDMOs. The systems used across functions are the same. Communications are more frequent and cleaner, with no issues around protection of turf or “not invented here” thinking. At Piramal, we’ve put integrated program managers in place and given them dedicated systems to streamline integration. It’s part of our mission to delight customers. As a result, sponsors are seeing the time, cost, and quality benefits of working with one partner across multiple elements of development and manufacturing. ADCelerate, our branded solution for integrated ADCs, is a perfect example of how this comes together. It utilizes the expertise at 4 sites: Yapan Bio, our associate company, supplies the monoclonal antibody, our Riverview or Aurora API site supplies the payload/linker, Grangemouth does the conjugation, and Lexington provides the sterile fill/finish. That’s 4 sites on 3 continents, all working together to streamline delivery.

Antibody-drug conjugations
Antibody-drug conjugations (ADCs) are currently experiencing strong interest which will lead to increased demand, so the need for services that accelerate the development of ADCs is greater than ever. Over the past 20 years, technological improvements have turned ADCs from a promising modality into a cornerstone of the care of certain cancers. The challenge now is to quickly bring the benefits of ADCs to more patients and establish the modality as a safer, more effective alternative to chemotherapy in a range of cancers. To meet that challenge, ADC developers will need to quickly develop rigorous IND packages that enable them to study their candidates in humans. Piramal is using its deep experience in ADC conjugation and fill-finish to address that need, and incorporating payloads, linkers, and antibodies into its integrated offer to further enhance the service. Drug developers that partner with Piramal will access expertise and capabilities that have facilitated the emergence of ADCs as one of the most powerful novel modalities in biopharma. Together, Piramal and its partners are improving the lives of patients by expanding access to breakthrough ADC treatments.

Patient centricity
Patient centricity has been a trend on the sponsor side of the innovator-CDMO relationship for many years, but it has only recently gained a foothold on the CDMO side. Most sponsor companies are patient centric in both word and deed, and by being a patient centric CDMO we are aligned with their goals and their values. The key for the sponsor is to select a CDMO partner that doesn’t just preach patient centricity, it lives it. For Piramal, patient centricity is a core ethos of the company. It’s something we train every employee on, right from onboarding. Every operational decision we make across the organization is evaluated with the patient in mind. It can lead to some tough decisions when patient-centric behavior conflicts with profitability, but it is vital to stay committed to the concept. If we are fully dedicated to helping our clients reduce the burden of disease on patients, then practicing patient-centric behavior is a basic mandate.