DPT pushing its CDMO status

The firm has started referring to itself as a CDMO, which stands for contract development and manufacturing organisation, in a bid to position itself in the market as a company that is bringing together drug development and manufacturing expertise within a single organisation. "CDMO describes organisations that have reached a point where they can work with customers from very early pre-formulation work all the way through scale-up and commercialisation​," John Feik, director of marketing and corporate development at DPT told Outsourcing-Pharma at the recently-held Interphex trade show in Philadelphia. "We've begun to communicate that we're a CDMO because we didn't want to be classified as just a contract manufacturing organisation (CMO) that provided only manufacturing services. Additionally, if we labelled ourselves as a contract research organisation (CRO), that wouldn't recognise our manufacturing capabilities. CDMO seemed to encompass both service offerings,​" said Feik. "We believe that we and others in our industry have reached a high level of integration with these functions and more traditional terms such as CRO and CMO have become obsolete​". According to Feik, when a contract services provider has that fully integrated continuum of capabilities, it simplifies matters significantly for the customer. "The customer is no longer is forced to work with multiple, non-integrated providers throughout the process. This approach saves customers both time and money​," he said. ​As yet, Feik said that there are only a handful of service providers that can fully integrate the drug development process from early-stage to full-scale manufacturing. As such, he said that CDMO is not yet a widely used or even recognised term within the pharma industry, but there are a few organisations starting to use the term, and DPT believes this term best describes companies that offer this range of services. ​ "There are several demanding disciplines along the development pathway and relatively few organisations can provide these capabilities at an extremely high level of expertise​," he said. "We've offered a full range of development and manufacturing services for many years. More recently, we have begun to hear that our customers appreciate how well these services work together.​" While these new generation of CDMOs begin to evolve and gain momentum within the industry, Feik believes that there will likely always be a demand for some pure CMOs and CROs, particulary if they are serving a niche market. "However, we see more and more customers looking for the combination of a one-stop solution to their development and manufacturing needs and specific dosage form expertise​," he said. "It is clear that the integrated approach to services is where the market is trending​."