With expanded operations in Clearwater, Florida and Gainesville, Georgia, Bend Bioscience is redefining what it means to be a next-generation contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO). Focused on solving complex oral and inhaled drug delivery challenges, the company blends cutting-edge science with collaborative service models to support innovators from early development through commercial scale-up. Contract Pharma sat down with Owen Murray, CEO of Bend Bioscience, to discuss the company’s growth, its role in the evolving drug product landscape, and how the company is helping partners translate scientific breakthroughs into real-world therapies.

Contract Pharma: Bend Bioscience has positioned itself as an innovation-driven CDMO. How do you define innovation in the context of formulation and drug delivery today?

Owen Murray: The last decade has been remarkable for medicine innovators and patients, producing breakthrough treatments and even cures. CDMOs played a huge part in making these breakthroughs possible by helping to transform medicinal chemistry ideas into real-world treatments. I think of CDMO innovation in terms of new drug delivery options, new drug development approaches, and the improved ability to make these ideas a reality with sufficient bioavailability, optimal delivery profiles, and manufacturability at scale. Further, having genuine conversations with our customers about their business allows us to “meet them at their moment” and provide services specific to their phase of growth. Optimizing service to meet the science is key to delivering technical innovation.

CP: What types of molecules or delivery challenges is Bend Bioscience best suited to solve, and how does that align with where the pharma pipeline is heading?

Owen: The new bigger, bolder, Bend was put together with exactly the objective to help innovators overcome obstacles across their oral delivery challenges. Bend Bioscience’s heritage is built on overcoming bioavailability with amorphous dispersion technology and particle engineering, and we are still great at that. But our Clearwater, Florida, site can help overcome a broad set of formulation challenges for orphan, rare and specialty molecules and has a deep understanding of pediatric and geriatric modalities. In Gainesville, Georgia, our site can manufacture across all oral formats at both development and commercial scale, with expertise in modified and controlled release technologies. As such, and with consideration of absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion, or ADME challenges presented by a growing discovery pipeline biased toward complex small molecules, we are uniquely positioned to design, develop and manufacture commercially viable drug products across our entire network.

CP: How do you define a “next generation” CDMO? What does that look like from a technology and culture standpoint?

Owen: We view the future of CDMO innovator partnerships to require top notch technology and delivery solutions, which we refer to as High Science, coupled with a seamless, reliable and collaborative approach, which we refer to as High Service. Accordingly, we are building the Bend culture around these two concepts with deep-rooted focus on novel science in which we invest with the goal of bringing to market for our partners, this is fashioned by both direct organic investment and inorganic partnerships. I am happy to say we have multisite collaborations with big pharma on drug delivery concepts that are product agnostic, nestled alongside decade-long commercial supply relationships. The ability to deliver on both paradigms is due to having world-class employees that listen to our partners’ needs and deploy agile management techniques to present the very best service. Culturally it’s about being smart and challenging what’s possible with both science and service and being honest so that we ensure credibility with our teams and our partners. 

CP: How do you balance being nimble and science-driven with the operational rigor required for scale-up and regulatory compliance?

Owen: We really view that as one and the same. Pharmaceutical drug delivery is obviously very science driven, but so is pharmaceutical manufacturing, which requires the same scientific approach, as well as analytical rigor and impeccable delivery with regulatory compliance. Agile management techniques are a science, and when you look at quality and regulatory requirements, they too are rooted in scientific methodologies, so we have alignment in deployed methods. Often, moving fast and being nimble is juxtaposed to scale and operations. This is simply a fallacy. When you have true scientific understanding, you are positioned to move quickly at scale and with confidence that you will meet compliance and regulatory standards. I would also note that we have a tremendous quality organization and people with strong scientific backgrounds, which is clearly important for cultural alignment, but equally for working with partners, regulatory bodies and ultimately patients; to safeguard requisite standards. 

CP: What role do you see Bend playing in the evolving oral and inhaled drug product landscape, especially as more complex modalities come to market?

Owen: That’s really our bread and butter and our heritage. Bend has always been on the cutting edge of drug delivery and our bigger bolder version now enables us to expand those solutions and scale them to patients. Being at the forefront of industry-wide development programs, we are seeing significant changes in structural chemistry as innovators better understand biological systems. This presents a great opportunity for us. These new complex molecules can arrive in both physical and chemical form, even being unique or novel peptides, and our ability to understand these modalities—via biomodelling and practical experimentation—coupled with process knowledge, allows us to unlock significant value for our partners. 

CP: Are there any recent collaborations or partnerships that have been impactful for Bend Bioscience’s trajectory?

Owen: Collaboration is a key part of our strategy, and inherent in our culture at Bend Bioscience. Three key groups of collaborators are complementary service providers, customers, and academic institutions. 

Complementary service providers. There are many facets to drug development services, and we know we can’t master them all. Instead, we partner with a network of specialists who offer particular tools in areas such as material science and analysis, software and modeling, and in vivo testing. In that way, we leverage our own capabilities alongside best-in-class expertise from industry experts.

Customer network. We work with customers as a service provider to develop and manufacture their important drug products. However, as an innovation force in the industry, we work with our customers as collaborators to jointly refine our approach to tackling emerging industry trends, and technology development initiatives for the products of the future.

Academic institutions. They are an important part of our community of collaborators for scientific networking and exploration of new technology development and licensing, and an important logical adjacency to our “reduction-to-practice” capabilities in early phase CGMP manufacture.

CP: From a sponsor’s perspective, what should companies look for when choosing a CDMO for early-phase development of complex formulations?

Owen: The key is in the word “complex.” Anything termed complex requires scientific rigor; deep expertise built across hundreds of projects; and with different technologies and approaches. It also requires a great deal of collaboration between the innovator and the CDMO partner to run experiments, discuss, debate, analyze and optimize specific to phase—that’s how lifesaving treatments emerge. So, innovators really will benefit from selecting a partner with whom they have confidence and rapport, a partner they feel knows more than they do, not on their molecule, but on drug delivery and formulation and who is willing to collaborate closely with them to make it happen! 

CP: As the CDMO space becomes increasingly crowded, how is Bend Bioscience differentiating itself in the eyes of emerging biotech and mid-sized pharma clients?

Owen: We believe that High Science in drug development and scale up and manufacturing is vital, because we believe that more and more molecules need such support. We also believe that to succeed, innovators and CDMOs need to collaborate very closely and demonstrate trust and true value. Understanding innovator needs and providing assurance and confidence that where they are is familiar to us and helping them look beyond, to build a lasting partnership, is what has led us to deliver innovative new products to market and deliver on decades long relationships. So, we have built tools and offerings that deliver that High Science to make our clients’ projects a success with the High Service they need and deserve to be able to deliver on their vision for improving health for patients. Furthermore, we do so in a manner that is collaborative, has urgency, but is reassuring and delivers value.