The study was conducted by The Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development (CSDD) and was supported by a grant from Patheon, which is now a part of Thermo Fisher Scientific.
“We brought the Patheon OneSource program to the industry to help our clients get to the market, and to patients, in the most efficient and cost effective manner,” Jennifer Therrien, head of campaign strategy at Thermo Fisher Scientific told Outsourcing-Pharma.com.
The company provided the grant to Tufts CSDD to “validate that clients are indeed accelerating their timelines under the single-vendor drug development model,” she explained.
Therrien said the results further confirm Thermo Fisher’s analysis of the cost and time savings sponsors can achieve when using a single source for drug development and manufacturing.
The results
The study compared various contract manufacturing approaches and the financial benefits of the different models. The results indicate that using a single-source outsourcing model shortens the drug development cycle, and in turn, saves on costs.
“If one-source contracting shortens the development cycle, sponsors can expect financial gains from having their products reach the market sooner,” according to the report.
A single-source partner has the potential to shorten timelines by an average of 14 weeks, according to the report, subsequently resulting in reduced costs by nearly $21m after taxes and increased net revenues by almost $24m – a net gain of approximately $45m.
However, the report noted further research “would be useful” in confirming the results.
“The results here and in any expanded analyses will be driven by the extent to which single-source contracting can compress development times,” the reported concluded.