Derek G. Hennecke CEO and President XcelienceXcelience recently announced it had reached a growth milestone this year. Can you tell us about that?
Growth for us is about increasing capacity and capabilities. Having capacity available is incredibly important to us at Xcelience. Capacity is synonymous with speed. If we can’t fit a project in, that project’s time to market could be delayed. That’s unacceptable. Our goal is to accelerate your time to your market, not slow it down. Over the last two quarters we completed 100% of our clinical supplies contracts within four weeks and 90% within two weeks. We also added new equipment, including a bi-layer press and we added D tooling, so we now offer both B and D tooling. Last summer we purchased another Xcelodose, bringing our total number to five.
Tell us about Xcelience’s new Clinical Supplies Packaging and Distribution Services division.
This addition to our business came about because we listened to our clients. They wanted a small, flexible clinical services packaging company that could adapt to changing study needs quickly and at a reasonable cost. Clients like our transparency and flexibility in the formulation stage, and wanted us to carry through to the next logical step. It was a glaring gap in the market. We took time, hired some key performers in the clinical supplies arena, and let our clients into the drawing room to help us design the ideal facility.
Today, we are the only American company under $2 billion revenue providing the combined services of clinical trial materials and clinical supplies. Our small size makes it possible for us to adapt to the ever-changing needs that big players can’t always accommodate. For instance, we can dedicate a room to just-in-time labeling for a particular protocol or pooled supply, and leave that room set up and ready to go at a moment’s notice; and it can stay ready as the protocol requires. The larger clinical supply companies can’t do that. Their labeling rooms are set up to run 10,000 bottles a day and are solidly booked. If you need twenty bottles of protocol X in San Diego tomorrow, it’s not going to happen. You’re going to have to wait for them to move things around and stop other projects to free up a room. Then you’re going to pay an inflated cost for that room. In our view, that’s just unreasonable and unnecessary. The cost is excessive and every day you delay is a day closer to patent expiration. With Xcelience as your supplier, you can have those 20 bottles out in a matter of hours, at a fraction of the cost. We’re quite simply the only supplier out there that can do that.
What do you think the biggest drug development challenges are for pharmaceutical companies today?
Flexibility. Molecules, like everything in nature, are unpredictable. API is limited. Patent life is short. You need to get your project through the process as quickly as possible, with as few mistakes as possible. Our expertise can speed your time to market. Most formulation scientists in a large company or biotech may formulate only two to three molecules in a lifetime. Our formulation scientists work with at least fifteen to twenty different molecules every year. This vast experience helps us better anticipate how any particular molecule will react throughout the formulation process. That means less trial and error, and faster time to market.
Think of us as the Cirque du Soleil of CDMOs. We are extremely flexible and our science is unmatched. No matter how impossible the feat you need us to perform, we will not only satisfy but we’ll surprise you. Our customer retention and quality speaks for itself.
How does Xcelience differ from their competitors?
We don’t really focus too much on the competition here at Xcelience. Focusing on the competition can help you keep pace with the competition. We don’t want to keep pace. We want to leap ahead of them. We believe that the only way to do that is to focus on our one responsibility, which is getting your molecule through this stage of development quickly and cost-effectively. That’s why we invented, among other things, a trademarked concept called Molecular Responsibility. Molecular Responsibility is a customized approach, which pulls together a number of tools at our disposal, all of which are geared to maximizing your limited API. Just as every molecule is inherently unique, every process we design through Molecular Responsibility is also one of a kind.
At Xcelience, we believe that as long as we stay focused on our clients’ molecules, our reputation will stand firmly before us and our customers will keep coming back.