Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1532595
26 Pharmaceutical Technology ® | BioPharm International ® Bio/Pharma Outsourcing Innovation February 2025 INDUSTRY TRENDS contract research organization (CRO) engaged in a partnership—also, to a certain extent, similarly shared risk management responsibi lit y bet ween CDMO/CRO and customer (3). Increasingly, the responsibilities referenced in seeking these potential partnerships are centered on sustainability. Pharmaceutical Technology® conducted a series of interviews in January 2025 that explored this aspect, perhaps best encapsulated by Saharsh Davuluri, vice chairman and managing director for Neuland Laboratories (4). "Sponsors are increasingly requiring sustainable or green manufacturing practices when negotiating for partnerships with Neuland," Davuluri said in the in- terview (4). "I think this trend is also kind of aligned with the broader industry shift toward sustainability … we are seeing that a lot of these companies are hav- ing their own approach ... or their own frameworks in what they would like to measure their partners with. This is not just about Europe versus [the United States], but also within a particular geography, every company has a different approach." Contract partnerships As the 2025 market finds its footing, the following is a non-exhaustive list of partnerships announced, developed, or forged so far in the year to date, repre- senting companies around the world offering a wide variety of specializations: • Bora Biologics will lend its center of excellence in Zhubei, Taiwan in support of the development and manufacturing of DotBio's lead asset DB007, a novel, tri-specific antibody—with a merger be- tween Bora and Tanvex BioPharma scheduled to be completed in the first quarter of 2025 (5). • Molex, the parent company of Phillips Medisize, announced the acquisition of Vectura Group, whose proprietary technology in the realm of neb- ulizers and dry powder, metered dose, and nasal inhalers will be absorbed by Phillips Medisize (6). • Sa m sung Biolog ics sig ned a cont rac t ma nu- facturing agreement with an undisclosed Eu- rope-ba sed ph a r m aceut ica l compa ny, w it h production to take place at Samsung Biologics' Songdo, South Korea manufacturing site (7). • Scribe Therapeutics announced it achieved a success milestone for one of its targets in a re- search collaboration with Sanofi, a component of which combines Scribe's proprietary clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) technologies with Sanofi's targeted, non-viral delivery technologies (8). • Hikma Pharmaceuticals signed an exclusive, si x-year com mercia l par tnersh ip w it h Emer- gent BioSolutions to produce 8 mg naloxone HCl spray at Hikma's manufacturing facility in Columbus, Ohio, then provide it to Emergent for sale in the US and Canada (9). • Lyndra Therapeutics launched a strategic collab- oration with Thermo Fisher Scientific in which T her mo Fisher w i l l leverage it s Accelerator Drug Development services for Lyndra's roster of long-acting oral therapies (10). • Lantheus Holdings acquired Evergreen Therag- nostics, a purchase which includes OCTEVY, a registrational-stage positron emission tomogra- phy agent for neuroendocrine tumors that Lan- theus believes will complement its own thera- peutic candidate, PNT2003 (11). • Rentschler Biopharma is withdrawing from the field of cell and gene therapy, ceasing operations at its Stevenage, United Kingdom site, in order to increase its focus on biologics (12). • Ardena has completed an acquisition of Catal- ent's state-of-the-art drug product manufactur- ing facility in Somerset, NJ, in the US (13). • Jabil announced it acquired Pharmaceutics In- ternational, Inc. (Pii), adding Pii's capabilities in aseptic filling, lyophilization, and oral solid dose manufacturing to Jabil's existing development and commercial production of auto-injectors, pen injectors, inhalers, and on-body pumps (14). Such attention to and emphasis on this research underlines the importance the bio/pharma industry is currently investing in its outsourcing decisions, and as the CDMO market continues to grow, the details of those decisions figure to get more and more precise.