Contract manufacturers in the West are rising to the challenge of their competitors in the East by providing value in the form of ingenuity rather than cost savings. And the tactic appears to be working.
Chemical & Engineering News recounts several such successes. Among them is the Novasep production scale-up of Provepharm's methylene blue, a useful compound, but one thought not well suited to pharma because of purity issues.
Provepharm enlisted Novasep, which accomplished the scale-up quickly, the article says, while also maintaining a low level of impurities. The CMO also helped develop analytical methods and invested in additional scale-up capabilities to support Provepharm's commercial launch.
In another case, Swiss contractor Solvias was opening a kilogram-scale cGMP facility to expand its service offerings to include early-stage drug-making in addition to its process design and analytical services. At the same time, Solvias client Vitae Pharma wanted help making starting materials for a kidney disease treatment.
The single-source aspect of working with Solvias earlier for help in designing the treatment's final production steps and now for production of starting materials spurred yet another deal: Solvias' production of the drug's API for future clinical trials.
- here's the story