Takeaways from CDMO Live Americas

Raman Sehgal (0:09)

Hey, guys and girls, welcome back to Molecule to Market, where we go inside the outsourcing space of pharma and biopharma services, covering every stage of the global drug development commercialization life cycle. I am your host, Raman Sehgal, and today's episode is a special episode that was recorded live at CDMO Live Americas last week in Boston. It was wonderful to be back in Boston where Molecule to Market was born six years ago, in fact, and really, really enjoy the event that Luke Christora and the team put on.

They've already had two very successful events in Rotterdam that we've covered on the podcast, and it was great to see their inaugural event in Boston, which went really, really well. It was very well attended, a great combination of buyers and vendors, so lots of CDMOs there, but also lots of external outsourcing and biotech types as well, mingling. And as per usual with these guys, their social elements of the event were superb. And so yeah, it was great to be part of the whole thing. And I was privileged to host a couple of sessions, but I was also asked to be on the panel for the final session of the whole event, which was basically the takeaways from CDMO Live Americas 2026, effectively just summarizing some of the key themes that were talked about. And yeah, I suppose ending the event in style. And so it was a privilege for me to be on that panel and on the panel that you'll hear today that was recorded live at the event. Our two former guests on Molecule's Market, first of all, Jen Chadwick, and she's founder of her own organization, Jennifer Chadwick Consulting. Great, great professional and a delightful human being, I have to say. And so having Jen on the panel next to me was great. And it was only boosted by the brilliant Ben Locwin, one of the most articulate guys I know in the industry. And he is now Senior VP at Reliant Life Sciences. And the third panelist was Jeff Buguliskis, who is the Deputy Chief Editor at Outsourced Pharma. And it was interesting for once not to be asking the questions. So it was an honor to have Dora Wells, who's the editor and conference producer for PharmaSource and their podcast, I'm indeed a key person in the whole CDMO Live setup, asking all of the questions. And she is a pro at this and so did a marvelous job. And so it was cool to be able to be on the panel and to be able to, I don't know, like kind of lighthearted way end the show. And they were kind enough, the team that were kind enough to give us the audio to share with you guys on the podcast. I suppose before we get into today's show, some of my general reflections from the event. I mean, there was so much to gather from all the talks and chatting to people. But I think, you know, there was one session which talked about the state of the industry. And there was a few kind of takeaways from that. That was almost data driven by the audience, which I think was really, really interesting that I thought I'd share before we get into today's session. I think the first one was a kind of an optimism for next year.

And there's still that kind of term that we hear again and again, which is cautiously optimistic. But there seemed to be more kind of people on the side of kind of being genuinely optimistic about the year ahead. And this is obviously specific to the CDMO space, more so than people that were planning for a rough year or that were more pessimistic. So I think it was great to just have that sense of positivism across everything, across the show generally. No surprise that tariffs obviously came up and they were top of the kind of what CDMOs and buyers are worried about in that kind of uncertainty that we're here in the sector.

Trade tariffs were, I think, got 41% of the votes. And, you know, next in line was FDA staffing costs, which is obviously delaying reviews and having an impact on everyone as well. So I think those two combined made up for the best part of like 70% of people's worried. Obviously, there was other things in there as well. But, you know, those two seem to be the things that people are most concerned about for the year ahead. And there was this sense that, you know, the tariffs are certainly not going to save the US and the industry. And obviously, there was a lot of talk about administration change coming in two years. And, you know, what we see, what we are seeing in the sector, particularly in the US, is that there is a moment in time and that's likely to change in a couple of years, which is kind of a theme that came up again and again. And on that point, there was a huge, there was numerous conversations on the first day relating to the reshoring pledge in the US, you know, this sense of 500 billion. And there's some fantastic presentations from Gil Roth, from Adam Siebert from LEK. Consulting, both who have been guests on the podcast, you know, data showing that this kind of 500 billion dollars is being pledged to US manufacturing and actually kind of a deeper insight into where this was going. And yeah, it was, from what the data was saying, it wasn't a huge percentage of it that was actually committed. And the stuff that had been committed was almost part of pre-existing commitments for investment from big pharma companies in the US. A certain amount of scepticism around the whole reshoring thing. Certainly from an audience perspective, there was a feeling that, you know, maybe 10 to 25 percent, maybe a bit more than that had been committed on that 500 billion, which seems to kind of correlate with the data that Adam presented as well. China, you know, was one of the themes that came up as per usual, and this kind of growth of neutral candidates entering trials, and the huge growth that they're seeing over there, and what that impact has on everyone else. And, you know, there was this, I think one of the panelists talked about the power of some of the CDMO and CROs in China, and there's just one in particular that I won't name, but that came up again and again, that have got a very, very substantial presence in early stage and late stage kind of manufacturing and research in China. And yeah, it was interesting to kind of talk at length about that, and it also led to an interesting conversation at the state of the manufacturing discussion that, you know, there are great CDMOs all over the world, including China, but there are also terrible CDMOs all over the world, including China as well. And so yeah, so lots of good themes that came from that. The other one that I think it's worth mentioning is this kind of talent piece as well. And obviously Lead Candidate is one of our sponsors here on the podcast of business that I co-founded. And talent is a massive, massive issue, particularly in the US when it comes to US manufacturing. And you know, there was this conversation around, where is this US talent going to come from, certainly in North America, but it probably applies to Europe as well. And you know, a combination of immigration and training pipeline seem to come up as reasonable solutions. But yeah, it's going to be a choppy time for the, for the talent side of things in the next few years.