Catalent investing $5m to bolster early development offering
The delivery technologies and development solutions provider this week announced the investment, which will establish its Somerset, NJ facility and headquarters as a center of excellence (CoE) focused on early phase formulation, analytical, and manufacturing solutions for orally delivered small molecules.
“There is a big trend in the industry where the molecules are getting more and more complex, both on the development side and the manufacturing side,” said Elliott Berger, VP of global marketing and strategy at Catalent.
“They need more expertise, they need more technology, they need more focus to get them through the system so they don’t fail for formulation purposes,” he explained. “There are plenty of other problems to overcome in this industry; you don’t need to fail for formulation purposes.”
Catalent is currently working on the expansion plans, Berger told us at CPhI North America, explaining that the company needs “some additional pilot-scale equipment [and] some additional lab equipment.”
“We also need some additional expertise to move these molecules around faster through the process,” he added.
However, the company is going to start talking to customers before any plans are solidified. Berger said: “We didn’t want to do a lot of planning until we talked to all the customers. Some of the stuff needs to be done in conjunction with the customer and we want to make sure we do it in a way that they would like it done.”
According to the company, the investment also will build on the site’s modified release formulation development capabilities, bioavailability solutions, and its application of OptiMelt hot melt extrusion (HME) technology.
