Contract Pharma recently caught up with UK-based contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) Aesica, whose capabilities include formulation development for API and finished dose, manufacturing at all scales and packaging services. We spoke to managing director, Ian Muir, who talked about the company’s service offerings, trends and challenges in the contract solid dose manufacturing market and the company’s new development center in Queenborough.

Contract Pharma: What’s going on at Aesica on the solid dosage front?

Ian Muir: At Aesica we are in the process of finishing a purpose built, stand-alone Development Center on our Queenborough commercial site, which is also a solid dose manufacturing site. One of the main areas of focus for the Development Center will be the formulation, development and clinical scale manufacture of capsules and tablets. Aesica believes that this will create a smooth transition from development to commercial for solid dosage products as both development and commercial sit on the same site.

A specific field that Aesica believes has significant potential is high potent products, particularly high potent solid dose products. Therefore Aesica has invested and is continuing to invest in high potency capabilities/capacity in both development and commercial scale manufacturing. In turn, this has generated a lot of interest with customers in both our development and commercial areas.

We continue to grow our partnership with our strategic customers for continuous manufacturing of tablets. This process is at the cutting edge of manufacturing processes for solid dose products.

CP: What direction is the business headed?

Muir: We are recognizing the needs of the customer and we are trying to work closely with them as a strategic partner rather than through the traditional customer-CMO relationship. At Aesica, we are striving to become a one source pharmaceutical partner from API through to formulation development to finished dose manufacturing. We believe customers would like to see this strategic partnership as a way of simplifying their own supply chain and thus reducing the number of CMOs they do business with.

CP: How would you describe the current state of the solid dosage manufacturing market?

Muir: It is as strong as ever. Solid dosage products, in particular tablets, continue to be one of the cheapest and the most economical of medical products. Tablets could be considered an old technology but demand will continue to remain high. The solid dosage market also continues to embrace new technology such as continuous manufacturing, to further improve efficiencies of the manufacturing processes. Patient compliance for solid dose products is also a major factor.

Todays NCE’s tend to be poorly soluble and or poorly bioavailable. New technologies have been developed over the last few years to deal with these challenges but also these technologies have an end goal of producing a solid dose product such as soft gel capsules or hot melt extruded products which can then be compressed into tablets.

CP: How is the market performing this year compared to last year?

Muir: Currently the solid dose market is stable and we expect this to continue in the future, although the effect of recent mega mergers (e.g Pfizer-Allergan) have not yet been felt. What we will see in the coming years, as our new development facility comes on-line is products that will be developed, with a view to being transferred into our commercial facility. We expect these products to be specialized, meaning our solid dose factory will adapt to become even more flexible to meet the needs to these products.

CP: What are some of the key drivers in the contract solid dosage business?

Muir: For one, the increase in demand for specialized dosage forms such as pediatric/geriatric, taste masked, anti-abuse and controlled release technologies. Pharma may not have the capacity or capability to manufacture these products. With this increase in specialized dosage forms, the CMO will hold the experience or the knowhow and therefore pharma companies will leave these products with the CMO.

Flexibility in manufacturing and packaging, especially for older but medically critical products is another key area. Big Pharma doesn’t want this hassle of small volumes with multiple skews going to different countries. CMOs must show flexibility but also process efficiency to make these products viable.

Another trend is moving towards strategic partnerships with Pharma as the pharma companies look to reduce the number of CMOs they deal with.

CP: Where are the opportunities for growth?

Muir: Reformulation of existing molecules; as pharma looks to reduce the number of CMOs, existing molecules will need to be transferred to another CMO. Some of these products may have been registered a long time ago and therefore may not pass the necessary standards of today and hence they could need reformulation or analytical development.

Generics will play a key part in the solid dose market for CMOs. As products come off patent, the generic manufacturers will require capacity to manufacture these products and will look at CMOs for this.

The majority of NCEs are for the biopharmaceutical market. The NCEs that are for the solid dose market will have some challenges such as poor solubility/bioavailability, high potency or they may require controlled release applications. Unless CMOs are flexible in their service offering, pharma will not consider them.

Regulatory health authorities are also becoming much more challenging which limits the number of facilities that specialized products can be manufactured from – again limiting a CMOs capability to offer the service. An example of this is in the generics market, where the FDA requires each site to pay a GUFDA facility fee for the manufacturing of generic products for the US market. If a certain CMO is only manufacturing one or two products, this could be quite costly and with the questions arising as to why should the CMO bear this cost?

CP: How are customer expectations evolving?

Muir: Customers are expecting CMOs to show flexibility in their service offering. As previously mentioned, products are becoming more specialized, so therefore, customers do not want to be tasked with the complex tasks and hassle of having to manufacture these products themselves. Instead, they will leave it to the CMO. Also, on the packaging side, where there is a great deal of complexity with different packaging formats and delivery to different countries, customers are expecting CMOs to deal with these issues. This then leads to customers demanding reliability and quality from their chosen CMO. CP