What Pharma really needs From CDMOs today

Raman Sehgal (0:09)

Hey, guys and girls, welcome back to Molecule to Market, where we go inside the outsourcing space of pharma services and pharma tools, covering every stage of the global drug development and commercialization life cycle. I am your host, Raman Sehgal. And in today's episode, I'll be speaking about pharma and biopharma ecosystem with Frank Binder, who is an independent consultant specializing in external manufacturing and supply chain management. And Dr. Frank is not only a great guy, but he is super, super experienced on the drug sponsor side of things in terms of supply chain management and dealing with CDMOs globally. So yeah, you're in for a bit of a treat today. Let me tell you a bit about our guest. Our guest, Frank, is a senior supply chain leader with experience across major pharma and biopharma companies in Switzerland, the US and Japan, which we get into in great detail in the kind of first half of today's interview. And as mentioned, he is now an independent consultant at GSCA and a global supply chain advisor, having previously held senior roles at Santen, Celgene, Novartis, Roche and Accenture. His expertise spans global supply chain transformation, biologics and API production, as well as CDMO management, international logistics planning, NPI as well. And Frank is recognized as a real pharma supply chain thought leader, regularly speaking at industry conferences in Europe, Asia and US. In fact, him and I were both on stage pretty recently separately at CDMO library this year. And that's where we caught up.

Beyond everything else he holds a doctorate in physical chemistry from the University of Berne with further executive education at Cranfield University, Harvard Business School and Insead. What a great guy, what a great guest. Thanks as always for being here, for listening. One thing to quickly add is I will also be attending CDMO Live Americas, which is on October the 21st in my beloved Boston, one of my favorite cities in the world. Super exciting for the CDMO Live team. This is their first ever event in North America. It's happening at the Sheridan Copeby Place, which I believe is in Back Bay in Boston. So, you know, bringing together kind of that same formula has worked really, really well for the guys across in Europe. For the event in Rotterdam is also going to be transplanted to the event in Boston. Super exciting and I'm very proud to be once again hosting a panel, which will be on the 20th of October. I'm not sure which panel I'm going to be doing, but I suspect it will be something related to outsourcing and external outsourcing. As per usual with these guys, there are some amazing outsourcing experts and speakers and influencers that will be at the event.

Looking forward, I think it's going to be 400 or 500 people there. A nice size in terms of getting to speak to lots of people there and meeting some new people.

They've got their partner match thing as well, which is fantastic. It is a way for the vendors to meet potential buyers and drug sponsors in external manufacturing in CMC, which is super exciting. If you can make the event, go to the CDMO Live website and I'm sure you can navigate your way to register there. I'll see you guys at the show in Boston and enjoy today's show.

This episode is brought to you by Bora Pharmaceuticals. I've got a real soft spot for Bora. I first met Bobby Sheng, CEO, back in 2017 It's been amazing to watch the business grow and expand to become truly top tier global CDMO. Bobby was, in fact, one of our first ever guests on Molecule to Market. A great, great guy. Bora now supports many of the biggest pharma companies across the globe. Bora has become known as the CDMO that brings a genuine partnership to clients. As shown through their shared risk promise, their white glove service and their peerless on time, in full delivery record. If you want to feel more confident about your CDMO, then I suggest you head to boracdmo.com.

Hey Frank, welcome to Molecule to Market.

Frank Binder (4:41)

Yeah, thanks Raman. I'm really excited to be finally on your show.

Raman Sehgal (4:44)

Yeah, it's been a while since we chatted and then obviously we saw each other relatively recently at CDMO Live. It was good to see you in person.

Frank Binder (4:55)

Yeah, absolutely. Same for me.

Raman Sehgal (4:57)

Excellent. Yeah, it was a good show, right? I felt like I got a lot out of that show. It was an excellent networking and great conversations.

Frank Binder (5:06)

I thought it was a great event. Yeah, absolutely. Very worthwhile.