Capitalizing on a Boom in Injectable Therapies
It wasn’t so very long ago that progress in delivering systemic treatments, via new oral technologies, inhalables, and via a plethora of alternative routes of delivery suggested that the days were numbered for invasive injections. But recent reports, and an apparently endless slew of capacity expansions and technological advances, now suggest that sterile injectables will remain a mainstay of drug delivery for some time to come. One report by ResearchAndMarkets.com predicts the global sterile injectable CDMO market is expected to more than treble from $11.1bn in 2024 to $33.7bn by 2034; a CAGR of 11.7%.
Demand, the report says, is being driven by a robust pipeline of drug approvals and increasing innovations. As biopharmaceutical companies push the boundaries of drug development - personalized treatments, gene therapy, autoimmune disorders, etc. - injectable therapies are still the go-to solution for delivering complex drug products.
They can be used for a wide range of drug types, including the delivery of liposomes, micelles, and nanoparticles, each offering unique benefits that include enhanced drug efficacy with reduced side effects.
And, of course, appearing almost from nowhere in the wake of demand for coronavirus vaccines, there is the massive and still growing demand for GLP-1 agonist drugs including Ozempic, Wegovy, Trulicity and many others that are becoming household names for weight management.
Enter CDMOs…
But biopharmaceutical companies face the same challenges with injectables that they do with any type of drug development, and matching output to meet demand quickly allows them to more speedily recoup high development costs and the money and resources committed over the years of clinical trials necessary to even try to win the approval of regulators and get to market. And then there’s the complexity of material supply chains and biopharma operations.
Good news for CDMOs.
The injectable CDMO market is shifting towards an end-to-end business model that offers comprehensive services from API development through to finished drug product manufacturing, by which we mean fill/finish of vials, prefilled syringes and autoinjectors, labeling, packaging, and storage. CDMOs that can accelerate development timelines and speed programs to market, and provide distributed capacity to meet global demand, have a distinct advantage over smaller CMO players that can scale…but only to a point.
Although specialist CDMOs are going to reap the benefits from the growing injectables market, there is however a great opportunity for smaller and medium sized biopharmaceuticals that can harness strategic collaborations and licensing agreements to share the cost of development and maximize supply chains. If investment climates improve, biopharma companies could also benefit from a rebound in funding activities, further accelerating the development and commercialization of innovative injectable therapies.
