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42% of N American antibody therapeutic companies manufacture externally

Posted by on 09 May 2019
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We recently conducted a survey of antibody therapeutics professionals, revealing an overview of the state of the industry in 2019. The final report based on 174 respondents from pharma and biotech (57%), academia (25%), CDMOs/CROs (10%) and other organizations (8%) around the world shows trends in therapeutic discoveries, clinical trials, manufacturing, delivery, regulations and business acquisitions.

Here we take a deep dive into the results around antibody manufacturing and drug delivery.

Download the full State of the Antibody Therapeutics Industry Report here.

Antibody Manufacturing

manufacturing-capacityManufacture is always one of the biggest challenges facing the emerging therapies, however respondents were fairly optimistic about current capacity in the antibodies field. When asked ‘On a scale of 1-10, how well equipped is current manufacturing capacity to satisfy demand in the industry?’, the average response was on the positive side (5.92/10), with those from pharma and biotech particularly positive, rating an average of 6.39. At the other end of the spectrum, academic institutions were far less positive (4.50) about the industry's manufacturing capacity.

When asked whether their company manufactures internally or externally (through a CDMO partner), results were split fairly evenly between those that manufacture internally (33%), externally (28%) and those that use both (39%). When comparing between location, European companies are far more likely to manufacture both internally and externally (43%) compared to their North American counterparts, who tend to pick one or the other, with just 21% using both. internal-cmo

Drug Delivery

tech-deliveryThe delivery challenge is one of the biggest facing novel therapeutics and the antibodies industry is clearly concerned by it. When asked how difficult it would be to overcome the delivery challenge for novel therapeutics (on a scale of 1 - Not at all difficult to 10 - Impossible) the average was on the higher end at 5.68. It was similar across job roles, with an average of 5.58 among project leaders/VP/Head and Directors, 5.97 among engineers, scientists and researchers, and 5.00 among professors and academics.

To help overcome this challenge, there are a range of exciting new delivery advancements and technologies emerging. Of these, respondents were most excited about CRISPR, followed closely by CAR-T. Further back, single cell technologies, immunotherapies, bispecifics and mRNA were all mentioned as the most exciting delivery advancement or technology respondents had seen.

Download the full State of the Antibody Therapeutics Industry Report here.

RELATED ARTICLE: Dr John McCafferty on how his antibody phage display work contributed to a Nobel Prize

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