Sartorius North America and KMI/Parexel International have formed an alliance that will improve the geographic reach of their biopharmaceutical production and consultancy services.
The new BioPharm-Alliance has been set up to combine the two companies' activities in process development and optimisation, scale-up and commercial-scale drug production. It will also provide consulting services to customers on effective regulatory compliance, especially with regard to validation, documentation and quality assurance.
Sartorius and KMI said they are responding to one of the major issues that affects the pharmaceutical and biotech market, funding the preclinical and clinical development of the thousands of pipeline drugs, which is extremely time- and cost-intensive. There is a clear trend among major drug makers towards outsourcing these activities, they claim.
"This new alliance will enable pharmaceutical companies to launch drugs more quickly and efficiently by integrating external expertise from the sectors of process development, scale-up and regulatory compliance," said the companies.
Complementary geography
One of the primary benefits of the collabration is that it draws on the respective territorial strengths of the two partners. Sartorius is well-established in Europe and Asia, while KMI's prime market is the USA.
Reinhard Vogt, senior vice president of Sartorius' biotechnology division, said: "It is the right time for such an alliance as it addresses major needs of thebiopharmaceutical industry in respect to time to market, compliancebarriers and cost efficiencies."