According to the newly-formed firm, this is the first service of its kind specifically designed for pharma and biotech firms that want to outsource storage and logistics services, but have highly specialised regulatory, security and space requirements that most existing commercial warehouse facilities cannot accommodate.
"Other companies do offer such services but we are not aware of any other company specifically tailoring these services for the pharma and biotech industry," CEO Jennifer Marcum told Outsourcing-Pharma.com.
Sentry currently has a five-acre block of land in Indianapolis, US, where it plans to build the new facilities and the company also has plans to acquire new land as and when needed.
The custom-built facilities will vary according to each individual company's needs and may range in size anywhere from several thousand square feet to several hundreds of thousands of square feet, and house anything from finished drug products, active pharmaceutical ingredients, excipients and bulk drug substances as well as packaging and other materials used in the pharmaceutical manufacturing process.
"Customised features may include segregated storage areas and dispensing suites, unique equipment, safety, security, electrical, structural & architectural design configurations," said Marcum.
"We cater for large pharmaceutical companies with well-established product lines, through to smaller firms that cannot afford the capitol outlay of their own facility."
Marcum said that the cost of such a service would depend on the scope of work being carried out, however, "we believe the price we charge will be very fair."
"We have developed this service due to demand from within the industry and we expect to have some contracts in place by early next year."
Once the facilities are up and running, sentry can then provide its cold chain storage and logistics services to help "reduce its clients distribution and operating costs," said Marcum.
The founders of Sentry spotted a gap in the US market for providing these specialised services exclusively for the biopharma industry and opened for business in May.
Sentry has since formed a partnership with BioStorage Technologies to offer global biopharma companies the first cold chain storage/logistics service that spans all phases of drug development.
Together the two US firms are able to offer sophisticated cold storage, shipping and tracking solutions, from R&D and drug development through to commercialisation.
BioStorage's strengths lie in the "front end" - the R&D phase - of the drug development process, while Sentry's experience lies more in the "back end" - the commercialisation and distribution phases - so the services offered by the two companies complement each other.
Specific services offered by BioStorage include long-term cold storage, sample tracking and international shipping solutions for biological materials such as cell lines and clinical trial sample.
Sentry provides third-party logistics (3PL) services and cold storage solutions for bulk and temperature-sensitive materials such as active pharmaceutical ingredients (API), bulk drug substances (BDS), intermediates, components and finished drug products.