Strategic analytical partnerships are important in the development of new pharmaceutical products, especially biologics. Here, Michael Merges, Catalent Biologics, and Brian Fahie, Biogen, discuss the growing need for partners who can provide niche technologies to accelerate development projects.
The perfect partnership
Contract research organisations (CROs) and contract manufacturing organisations (CMOs) play an important, and growing, role in the development of new pharmaceutical products, especially for biologics. Big pharma companies are increasingly shifting key internal resources from small molecule programmes to biologics programmes. As a part of this shift, many companies are becoming more reliant on outsourcing for a range of operations from analytical science to product manufacture. Start-up biotech companies can be entirely virtual, with all practical functions performed by experts elsewhere.