Over my decade-long tenure with CordenPharma the last few months have truly been one of the most rewarding times for me and the CordenPharma team because, in addition to continuous support for our customers and ongoing alignment with our shareholder, we have made a bold move. I am pleased and proud to announce that CordenPharma will undergo a transformational expansion of our Peptide Platform as a result of strong order intake, committed sales volumes and long-term strategic vision.
CordenPharma is making a record investment of ~€900m over the next 3 years in expanding our peptide platform, both at our CordenPharma Colorado, US site and in Europe. The expansions, covering both existing facilities and new constructions, will meet the pharmaceutical industry’s most stringent quality and technical standards for short and long peptide manufacturing, including BLA requirements. Here are some key take aways from this exciting news:
A key driver in the Peptide market are Glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) agonists, which mimic the action of a natural peptide hormone that is released when food is consumed. Stimulating the receptor of this hormone causes the pancreas to make more insulin, and the liver to make less glucose. It also slows down food digestion, thus reducing appetite. As a result, GLP-1 agonists reduce both blood glucose and body weight.
As diabetes treatments, GLP-1s have been around for many years, but products developed more recently have demonstrated a much bigger impact on weight loss and on the comorbidities that arise from diabetes than the earlier products. This has led to a dramatic increase in their use, and has stimulated the development of numerous pipeline drugs, both oral and injectable, some of which target multiple receptors, not just that for GLP-1s. Some of these drugs are modified natural peptides, some fully synthetic peptides, others small molecules, and one product combines an antibody with a peptide.
These investments will profoundly impact our ability to provide valuable and much needed support to you, our customers, for the benefit of the patients you serve. We are honored by the trust you have placed in us to deliver expert outsourcing for large multiyear contracts, and our Team is proud to contribute decades of peptide manufacturing experience towards these transformative new medicines.
In addition, the strong commitment and support of our shareholder Astorg demonstrates their strategic vision for CordenPharma to become the leading CDMO for complex modalities such as Peptides by offering fully-integrated end-to-end services from APIs to Drug Products.
In other news, we are excited to announce that the consortium formed between WACKER & CordenPharma has officially entered the pandemic readiness state as of 1 June 2024 to produce 80 million vaccine doses within a short time, if needed. Following a successful expansion and qualification phase, both companies are now in a stand-by readiness phase for at least five years.
Should the need arise, the German government will contact the developer of the specific mRNA vaccine required and WACKER & CordenPharma will then jointly produce this mRNA vaccine in line with the highest pharmaceutical quality standards, with most of the production steps taking place in Germany, and every production step occurring within the European Union. I am proud of the global teams across CordenPharma and our partner Wacker that worked diligently to prepare for this milestone on schedule.
As part of the consortium, CordenPharma is ready to manufacture custom and standard lipids in our Frankfurt (DE) and Chenôve (FR) sites, as well as provide aseptic fill & finish and packaging of the chosen mRNA-based vaccine at our Caponago (IT) facility.
During the two-year qualification phase, CordenPharma successfully invested in multiple expansions, including new lipid purification capacity and capabilities utilizing Supercritical Fluid Chromatography (SFC), and new compounding and freezing equipment. For pandemic readiness, WACKER and CordenPharma have furthermore strengthened their production security and supplier network, as part of a complex pandemic readiness strategy across the EU sites involved.
Thank you again for being a loyal and valued customer! We look forward to meeting existing and new customers at the upcoming scheduled events throughout the year.
To conclude, feel free to reach out to your respective Key Account Managers to schedule a meeting or provide any feedback on how we can better serve you – with the ultimate goal of being your long-term partner! Enjoy your summer!
Dr. Michael Quirmbach
President & CEO
CordenPharma Group
Dr. Michael Quirmbach
CEO & President
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