ARTICLES BY LOUIS

• One Percent Of A Hundred People's Efforts

  12/5/2024

  Persephoni BioPartners CEO Hilary Shultz, and newly hired Chief Scientific Officer William Heath – a 34-year veteran of Eli Lilly – explain their biotech-forming business model, dubbed a venture studio, and provide sound advice on working with CDMOs.

• Go Ahead, Outsource Your Entire Biotech

  12/2/2024

  Persephoni BioPartners CEO Hilary Schultz has created a business model that may propel “externalization” to an ultimate implementation: The formation of a biotech by outsourcing the entire organization, which then outsources to advance an asset. Schultz describes Persephoni as a venture studio. Chief Editor Louis Garguilo investigates further ...

• More AI But Fewer Process Chemists?

  11/25/2024

  Artificial intelligence (AI) has made its way to the midsection of our new-drug life cycle. AI now directly enables route-scouting and data scientists. The enabling is happening at drug sponsors and at your CDMOs. What does this look like in practice? Will there be fewer process chemists in the future, and who will they be?

• Fabled Route-Scouters Riding AI Applications

  11/18/2024

  Route scouting professionals – self-effacing hunters of small-molecule simplicity, searching for efficient pathways to commercial success, fearless in pointing out risks, and at times, dead ends. Today they face mounting challenges. Can artificial intelligence (AI) bring more clairvoyance to these battered scientists? “Absolutely,” says Dr. Jürgen Swienty-Busch of Elsevier.

• Is Executive Leadership At Today's CDMOs Up To The Job?

  11/11/2024

  A report from WittKieffer's Global Life Sciences provides a macro analysis of the executives that helm today’s CDMOs. Competent executive leadership should be a main driver of business-to-business confidence. So as a component of your CDMO due diligence, are you adequately assessing the senior executives at that organization? If so, do they inspire confidence that theirs is a well-governed and operated entity?

• Aftershocks: Catalent's Leader Assures The Market

  11/7/2024

  Hard to believe it was back in early February we got the news: Novo Holdings Acquires Catalent. As with any “shake up,” the dust settles and emerging "realities" must be addressed. That’s what has transpired via an "open letter“ from Catalent's executive officer. “I want to correct a few key inaccuracies,” he begins. Analysis from Chief Editor Louis Garguilo.

• Global CDMOs: What's The Right Price And Location?

  11/5/2024

  Jin-an Jiao of Synthekine, a developer of CAR T therapies and biologics, says despite the specifics of his pipeline, plenty of CDMOs are interested in working with him. “However,” he says, “what’s most interesting is there's a huge difference in price estimates for the same work.” Here's his advice on how to handle that.

• I Outsource, Reluctantly

  11/1/2024

  “I’ve worked with CROs and CDMOs since 2000,” says an outwardly jovial Jin-an Jiao, VP, Process and Analytical Development, Synthekine, a developer of CAR T therapies and biologics. His apparent mirth, though, masks a complication: Generally speaking, Jiao is a reluctant outsourcer. Here's how he handles that.

• My Kingdom For A Horse! Or At Least A CDMO

  10/28/2024

  The crown of commercialization depends more than ever on specialized technologies and skilled workmanship, inducing an arduous search throughout the kingdom of development and manufacturing for external partners. Alas, we had thought we’d entered a golden age of outsourcing.

• Were We (Are We) Correct About Oligonucleotides?

  10/25/2024

  In 2023, Chief Editor Louis Garguilo proclaimed it was "the year of oligonucleotides," and 2024 would be an incredible growth year for oligos. How are those proclamations panning out? He takes a detailed look, including the important role in the expected growth played by CDMOs.