Samsung Biologics said that the company has opened a research and development center in San Francisco, Calif., to secure a bridgehead for growing into the world’s top contract development organization.
Samsung Biologics decided to create its first overseas forward base in San Francisco, as the area is the birthplace of the bio-industry and home to 2,500 global pharmaceutical firms, such as Genentech, Gilead, Merck, and Boehringer Ingelheim, the company said in an online news conference.
“By opening the CDO R&D center, we are planning to support customers’ drug development process through close and prompt communication with multinational pharmaceutical firms located in the area,” Samsung Biologics CEO Kim Tae-han said. “The idea is to become a next-door CDO partner that can narrow down the physical distance and provides quick service.”
Through this center, Samsung Biologics hopes to resolve the time difference and low geographical access concerns raised by some overseas customers, he added.
Kim stressed that the company aims to become a CDO leading company by 2025. “In line with our goal, the company will also establish R&D centers in Boston, EU, and China, shortly,” Kim said.
The R & D center’s opening means the company has already started to move toward its goal of becoming one of the world’s most efficient CDOs.
“We have managed to reduce the time required for cell line development and drug substance production to six months, and the entire production period to seven months,” Kim said. “This is about twice faster than the 12-month development period required by other global companies.”
The company has also already seen positive results ahead of opening up its R&D center in San Francisco, having signed about 60 CDO contracts since it entered the business two years ago, according to a news release presented by Samsung Biologics. For example, substances developed on commission by Samsung Biologics’ have received two clinical approvals from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and one approval from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) this year.
Also, GI Innovation has managed to license out GI-101, an immunotherapy candidate that Samsung Biologics provided CDO services from the beginning, to Simcere, a Chinese pharmaceutical company, for 900 billion won ($792.9 million).
“The short term goal is to secure 50 percent of the contract manufacturing organization (CMO) volume through the CDO projects by 2030 with the help of our new plant and R&D centers,” Kim said. “The company has set up the head office’s latest service platform in the San Francisco’s R&D center and will design the fourth plant so that it can provide an end-to-end one-stop service from cell line development to final product production.”
The company had announced that it would invest 1.7 trillion won into building a plant with the world’s largest bioreactor capacity of 256,000 liters in Incheon in August.
In the long-term, Kim stressed that the company would make its one-stop service complete by adding the contract research organization (CRO) business that it kicked off earlier this year.
“By achieving the goal of becoming the leading CMO company in 2020 and aiming to become a CDO and CRO leader by 2025 and 2030, respectively, we are seeking to become the world’s most competitive one-stop service company,” Kim said.