CPhI sheds light on future markets

At the largest pharma and biotech meeting ever in Barcelona, CPhI organiser UBM presented several huge growth opportunities by 2021 within its annual report: A first trend is identification of new targets using real world data and massively parallel computing to find context-dependent biomarker/target patterns in clinical samples affects both big pharma and biotech drug development. However, current analysis suggest that genome-wide association studies show European bias as most studies in the last decade were carried out there. 

The second one was named as individualisation of solid dosage forms with defined drug release profile through 3D printing technology. Advances in 3D printing technology would allow printing on demand, ie of orphan drugs of of two or more APIS at the same time. But 3D printing is not limited to small molecule drugs. A handful of biotech companies such as start-up company Cellbricks (Berlin) is already trying to print complex tissues (liver, placenta) for drug testing and will launch services in Q1/17. However, Big Pharma’s move to more biologics is more reflected by efforts to switch from fed-batch to continuous manufacturing.

Further topics addressed at the show ranged from implementation of continuous manufacturing, particularly DSP, in the biologics space, growth strategies of small specialised companies in the CDMO field, and biosimilar uptake as an affordable alternative to older originators. At CPhI’s traditional gala event, Millipore-Sigma’s Udit Batra was awarded CEO of the year, reflecting the acquisition of Sigma-Aldrich by Merck-Millipore, which created a €4.7bn business offering more than 300,000 life science products.