Christina Smolke, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Antheia, describes how biomanufacturing can provide sustainable, high-quality APIs and KSMs, and de-risk pharmaceutical production by localising and streamlining supply chains.
Global crises like pandemics, extreme weather events, and geopolitical conflicts have underscored the urgent need to secure and fortify supply chains, especially those of the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and key starting materials (KSMs) used in essential medicines. Many of these APIs and KSMs are derived from plants grown in specific environments across the world, making them especially susceptible to supply shortages on both the local and global scale.