Piramal eyes global leadership in development of ADCs

Piramal Enterprises' pharma solutions division today said it aims to become the market leader in Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADCs) over the next five years.
"We have set a target of becoming the market leader in ADCs contract commercialisation over the next five years. This is based on our focused investments at our current site in Grangemouth, UK and recent acquisition of Coldstream - a specialised ADC fill/finish site, in Kentucky, USA," the company said in a statement here.
The pharma division, a leading contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO), sees the market for commercial ADCs accelerating over the next few years and a steady increase in number of potential drug targets entering the clinical phase.

Piramal expects about eight drugs to move into commercial production by 2020, which is a significant jump considering it only manufactures one commercial product today.
Despite an increase in development targets for ADCs, the global contract manufacturing sector still remains significantly under-resourced, with only a handful of players with experience and even less with the required regulatory accreditations, the release said.
Piramal is now in its fifth year of commercial production on the first-ever commercial ADC in the market and is using this landmark to look ahead five years to cement its position as a leader in manufacturing of ADCs.

Over the last decade, Piramal has gradually expanded internal teams and has nearly 150 ADCs specialists across its global sites, it said.

"At present, very few CMOs (contract manufacturing organisations) have the facilities or experience to develop them. At the moment there are only two CMOs, including ourselves, which are leading the charge in the commercial manufacturing of ADCs," Piramal Enterprises CEO - Pharma Solutions, Vivek Sharma said.
"Piramal is targeting winning at least one in every two commercial contracts coming to market over the next few years.
"We have been in the ADC market for over 10 years, and it is an expertise we have built both organically and inorganically. We see the next 5 years as an exciting time for the ADC market and possibly have a sizeable contribution in the total biological CMO market," he added.