Innovations at INTERPHEX Guide 2022 - 22

AN INTERVIEW WITH...
Jan Vertommen, PhD
Executive Director, Head of
Commercial Development
Small Molecules EMEA and APAC
Can you give us an overview of the
products and services Lonza provides
to the pharmaceutical industry?
Lonza serves global partners in the pharmaceutical, biotech and
nutrition markets. We optimize scientific innovation and manufacturing
technology to develop and manufacture drug substances
and drug products that enable our customers to serve
their patients and consumers.
We provide a wide range of services and products from early
phase development to commercial manufacturing of active
pharmaceutical ingredients and innovative dosage forms for
the pharma and consumer health and nutrition industries. Our
scale and resources mean we can provide a one-stop solution for
our customers to help people get well, feel well, and stay well. In
2020, we supported more than 820 preclinical and clinical small
and large molecules, more than 245 commercial small and large
molecules and produced 230 billion capsules.
In general, what are some current industry
issues regarding the manufacturing of
APIs that pharmaceutical companies are
dealing with?
Emerging pharmaceutical
companies are developing
the
majority of small molecule API compounds and these companies
face certain challenges such as accelerated manufacturing
timelines due to speedy approvals, competitive clinical trials,
and continuous innovation. This can be challenging for
emerging and smaller biotech companies who need to meet
this demand and manufacture enough drug substance and
product for the clinical phase with limited resources. Therefore,
many of them look to strategic partners for their expertise and
support on development and production.
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| Innovations at INTERPHEX 2022
This is especially true for highly potent APIs (HPAPIs). As HPAPI
development and manufacturing requires specific expertise and
high investment in assets, emerging and biotech companies will
look for external manufacturing partners for drug substance
and drug product development especially for HPAPIs, while they
focus on the clinical development of their molecules.
As a subset of APIs, what are some of the
industry drivers that make HPAPIs attractive
to pharmaceutical manufactures and what
are some of their drawbacks?
HPAPI-based therapies have the potential to help treat cancer,
autoimmune diseases, among other indications.
Given the high toxicity of HPAPIs, manufacturing them requires
an extremely strict containment and handling strategy that may
be difficult to establish in-house. This is especially a challenge
Innovations at INTERPHEX Guide 2022

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