Piramal Expands Capabilities for Development and Manufacturing of Antibody Drug Conjugates

• Coldstream Laboratories

Piramal Enterprises' Pharma Solutions division, a global contract development and manufacturing (CDMO) company, has set a target of becoming the market leader in ADCs contract commercialization over the next five years. This is based on its focused investments at its current site in Grangemouth UK and its recent acquisition of Coldstream – a specialized ADC fill/finish site, in Kentucky, USA.

The CDMO sees the market for commercial ADCs accelerating over the next few years and a steady increase in number of potential drug targets entering into the clinical phase. Piramal expects about eight drugs to move into its commercial production by 2020 which is a significant jump considering it only manufactures one commercial product today. The CDMO suggests that despite the increase in development targets for ADCs, the global contract manufacturing sector still remains significantly under resourced with only a handful of players with experience and even less with the required regulatory accreditations.

Piramal is now in its fifth year of commercial production on the first ever commercial ADC in the market and is using this landmark to look ahead five-years to cement its position as a leader in manufacturing of ADCs. Over the last decade, Piramal has gradually expanded its internal teams and has nearly 150 ADCs specialists across its global sites.

There are currently two commercialized ADCs on the market and Vivek Sharma, CEO – Pharma Solutions, Piramal Enterprises, commented: “the situation with ADCs mirrors what happened when Monoclonal Antibodies (mAbs) first started to commercialize. At present, very few CMOs have the facilities or, just as crucially, the experience to develop them. At the moment there are only two CMOs, including ourselves, which are leading the charge in the commercial manufacturing of ADCs. Piramal is targeting winning at least one in every two commercial contracts coming to market over the next few years”.