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PharmaSource Podcast

Life Science Networks

Welcome to the PharmaSource podcast: the pharma and biotech podcast that explores the latest trends, challenges, and commercial opportunities shaping the biopharma manufacturing and outsourcing.

In each episode we'll be speaking with top executives, researchers, and outsourcing experts, who share their perspectives on topics such as building a smarter, more sustainable supply chain, how to partner with CDMOs, digital transformation, procurement and external manufacturing strategies, and plenty more besides.

Make sure to subscribe for your regular dose of pharma insight.

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  • 25 episodes
  • a few times a week
  • Avg 28 min
  • English

Episodes 25

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  • Thursday · 34 min

    “Mexico Is the New China”: Reshoring Institute Executive Director Rosemary Coates on the Future of Pharmaceutical Reshoring

    “If you look at the employment numbers in the manufacturing sector, it’s been absolutely flat for two years. The political noise has not driven that big wave of reshoring that we were expecting.” After a decade of making the economic case for bringing manufacturing back to America, Rosemary Coates says the data tells a very different story from the press releases. Rosemary Coates is Executive Director of the Reshoring Institute and President of global supply chain consultancy Blue Silk Consulting, with 35 years of experience across industries from healthcare to high tech. She has consulted for over 80 clients worldwide, served as an expert witness in major supply chain disputes, authored five books including the Amazon bestseller 42 Rules for Sourcing and Manufacturing in China, and was named one of the 100 Most Influential Women in Silicon Valley in 2024. In the latest PharmaSource podcast episode, Rosemary explains what the data really says about reshoring to the US, why tariff volatility has frozen executive decision-making, and how pharmaceutical companies can build manufacturing strategies durable enough to survive an unstable world. Read the full article.

  • Sunday · 29 min

    How Cognition Therapeutics Cut Cost of Goods by 85% Through Smarter CMC Strategy

    “No one is going to care about your project as much as you do.” Steven Weissman is Vice President and Head of CMC at Cognition Therapeutics, a small pharma company outside New York City developing CT1812, a neurodegeneration candidate now through three Phase 2 trials in Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body dementia, and dry AMD. He spent 18 years in the process chemistry groups at Merck before moving into the small pharma space, where he has managed CMC functions at Concert Pharmaceuticals, Lexicon, and now Cognition Therapeutics. In the latest PharmaSource podcast, Steven explains how small biotechs can build a manufacturing supply chain from scratch, why cost of goods is a lever most teams pull too late, and what working on drugs that made it to market, and some that didn’t, taught him about when to invest in process development. Read the full article.

  • August 20 · 19 min

    How to Connect a CDMO Network Without Starting From Scratch

    “Digital collaboration is a competitive advantage for everyone — for CDMOs and CMOs, it’s not a question of if you’re going to do it, it’s when. So how do you get ready for it?” At CDMO Live Europe 2026, Sham Afzalpurkar, CEO of Collabrix, presented a standards-based, AI-enabled framework for connecting sponsor-CDMO networks at scale, arguing that custom point-to-point integrations are structurally unsustainable as external manufacturing portfolios grow. Read the full article here.

  • August 17 · 24 min

    CDMO Relationship Management Across the Americas: Why Culture Changes Everything

    “When we go to an external partner, we need to show up as one single aligned organization. If we’re not aligned internally, the CMO ends up becoming the referee.” In pharmaceutical manufacturing, the quality of a CDMO partnership is rarely determined by the contract alone. According to Sabrina Mattos, Senior Director of External Manufacturing for the Americas at Elanco, what truly separates high-performing partnerships from dysfunctional ones comes down to two factors: internal alignment and cultural intelligence. Sabrina brings over 20 years of pharmaceutical industry experience spanning quality, supply chain, and operations leadership across Brazil, Europe, and North America. As a pharmacist who began her career as a QA representative at Eli Lilly in Brazil, she has progressed through site leadership and global roles to now oversee Elanco’s external manufacturing portfolio across the US, Canada, and Latin America — a hub spanning close to 50 CMO relationships. In a recent PharmaSource Podcast conversation, Sabrina shared how Elanco structures its external manufacturing teams, navigates the cultural differences that shape partnerships across the Americas, and why getting internal alignment right before approaching a CDMO is non-negotiable. Read the full article.

  • August 13 · 14 min

    How To Complete a Dual-Site Biologics Tech Transfer in 90 Days

    At CDMO Live Europe 2026, Jeff Mason, VP and Head of US Sales at Samsung Biologics, demonstrated a risk-based, parallel approach to dual-site technology transfer that delivered a first GMP batch at a second facility within 90 days of initiation. Read the full article.

  • August 10 · 38 min

    When Outsourcing Goes Wrong

    When relationships with contract manufacturers break down, the cause is rarely just the contract manufacturer. A panel of three sponsor-side executives examined the warning signs, the internal failures, and the governance models that determine whether a difficult relationship recovers or ends. At CDMO Live Europe 2026, a session, moderated by Raman Sehgal of the Molecule to Market podcast, brought together three buyers: Stefan Bouckaert, a Quality and Operations Leader who spent 20 years at Johnson & Johnson overseeing 170 contract manufacturing organizations and 5,500 suppliers; Nick Wark, Head of External Manufacturing and Strategic Partnerships at Ferring Pharmaceuticals, overseeing several dozen contract manufacturers; and Oksana Vodovska, Business Development Manager at Sopharma, a regional generics company that selectively outsources alongside its own production facilities. Read the full article.

  • August 6 · 21 min

    Why the Least Expensive CDMO Could Cost the Most

    “The least expensive CDMO on the first day of bidding may not be the optimum value CDMO three years later.” Choosing a contract development and manufacturing organization is not about who quotes the lowest unit price. It’s mainly about who keeps your clinical timeline intact. Prakash Savarirayan is a life sciences procurement leader with more than two decades of sourcing experience, over a dozen years of it in biopharma, including senior roles at Takeda (formerly Shire) and Roche’s Spark Therapeutics. He has led complex CDMO partnerships, supported M&A integrations, and built governance models across small molecules, biologics, and gene therapy, and now advises pharma and biotech clients in consulting capacity. In the latest PharmaSource podcast episode, Prakash explains why getting CDMO selection right matters more than negotiating the lowest price, how procurement earned a strategic seat at the table, and why the right partner protects both patient safety and enterprise value. Read the full article.

  • July 30 · 13 min

    How To Deliver a High-Concentration Bispecific Antibody Tox Batch in 4 Months

    Leon Tian, Director of US Project Management, ProBio, walked through the cell line development, high-concentration formulation, and purification workflow, delivering a bispecific antibody tox batch from a single selected clone in 4 to 5 months at CDMO Live Europe 2026. Speed is always a top priority in biologic CMC development — but most of the time, speed trades against quality or regulatory confidence. What I want to show today is that this trade-off is not necessary.” ProBio’s client brought a demanding brief: a bispecific antibody project requiring a high-concentration formulation of approximately 120 mg/mL, produced from a single selected clone, with a tox batch delivered in 4 to 5 months. Tian called it a “mission impossible” scenario, then spent the session methodically explaining how ProBio’s platform addresses each part of that challenge. Read the full article.

  • July 27 · 11 min

    Novartis’ Win-Win Approach to Greener Drug Development

    “Environmental Sustainability can be a substantial differentiator for CDMOs” Jürgen Wieland, Development Environmental Sustainability Lead at Novartis, is engaged to integrate sustainability into development processes, including reducing the emissions of clinical trials. Jürgen brings over 20 years of finance and controlling experience to his sustainability role at Novartis, where he’s responsible for embedding environmental considerations across R&D and clinical operations. Before joining Novartis in 2011, he served as CFO of an NGO bringing solar energy to rural East Africa. In a recent PharmaSource podcast, Jürgen shares how pharmaceutical companies and their Contract, Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) partners can reduce scope 3 emissions while improving operational efficiency—proving that sustainability and profitability are not mutually exclusive. Read the full article here.

  • July 23 · 38 min

    Network Resilience: Why Dual Sourcing Alone Won’t Save You

    At CDMO Live Europe 2026, a panel of pharma and CDMO executives examined how supply chains must be redesigned for a world of sustained geopolitical pressure, regulatory fragmentation, and accelerating demand, and where contracts, governance, and visibility fit in. This panel brought together Steve Leonard, COO, Meribel; Ryan Kelly, Interim CEO, Rx-360; Frank Binder, Managing Director, GSCA; and Maik Talarczyk, Head PMO ESO, Sandoz. Read the full article.

  • July 20 · 23 min

    Building a CMC Strategy That Satisfies Regulators and Attracts Investors

    “Projects quite often realize too late that their R&D process cannot just be copy-pasted from the lab into the manufacturing facility.” Dr. Jenny Prange is Head of Project Management at the Regenerative Medicine Technologies Platform (RMTP) at Wyss Zurich, an accelerator embedded within ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich. With a background spanning molecular biotechnology, a PhD in human physiology, and hands-on experience translating an advanced therapy medicinal product (ATMP) from bench to clinical trial at University Hospital Zurich, Jenny brings both scientific depth and manufacturing expertise to early-stage biotech projects. In this PharmaSource podcast episode, Jenny explains why the leap from academic research to GMP-ready clinical manufacturing is consistently underestimated, what it actually takes to build a robust CMC strategy, and how translational facilities like Wyss Zurich are filling a critical gap in the biotech development landscape. Read the full article.

  • July 15 · 22 min

    How Polpharma Transferred 21 Products Across Five CDMOs

    Andrzej Hoczyk, External Supply Operations (ESO) Head at Polpharma, presented the case for treating large-scale tech transfer as a managed program rather than a series of parallel projects at CDMO Live Europe 2026, drawing on a five-year, 21-product sterile portfolio migration across five contract manufacturing sites. Read more.

  • July 13 · 40 min

    How Bayer Builds Lasting CDMO Partnerships Through Trust and Constructive Tension

    "The quality of any relationship becomes most visible during times of challenge and pressure," says Frederik Krekeler. Frederik Krekeler is Head of Procurement for Bayer's Consumer Health business in North America, leading sourcing strategy and supplier partnerships across a critical global network. With over 20 years of supply chain leadership spanning Europe, Latin America, and North America, he is known for building strategic CDMO relationships that deliver both resilience and commercial performance. Ahead of CDMO Live Americas (20-21 October, Boston), Frederik shares the principles behind Bayer's approach to CDMO partnership management, covering the multi-year network reset of Project Martini, the innovation days and Negotiation Factory programs that keep suppliers engaged year-round. For anyone managing external manufacturing relationships in a rapidly evolving market, it's a practical and candid playbook. Read the article

  • July 9 · 21 min

    The Rezon Bio Story: Interview with Dr. Adriana Kiedzierska-Mencfeld

    At CDMO Live Europe 2026, Dr. Adriana Kiedzierska-Mencfeld, Chief Executive Officer of Rezon Bio, drew on 11 years of leading operations at Polpharma Biologics to explain why biosimilar developers must address cost strategy in process development, long before any product reaches market.

  • July 6 · 36 min

    CMC Strategies Transforming Biologics Drug Development

    “CMC was not usually a core part of the planning — it was more of an afterthought. Now that funding has tightened, that is changing.” Siddhartha Jain, President of Shoolin Management Company, has spent two decades in biologics CMC across Novartis, Regeneron, Sanofi, and other major companies, contributing to the development and manufacturing of over 10 clinical and commercial molecules. In this episode of the PharmaSource podcast, Sid shares why raw material variability remains one of the industry’s most underestimated risks, what separates a technically proficient CDMO from one that is merely experienced, and why digital CMC transformation fails when it ignores people and process. Read the full article.

  • July 2 · 44 min

    Strategic Procurement: How To Build Win-Win CDMO Alliances Beyond Price

    At CDMO Live Europe 2025, a panel of procurement and commercial leaders argued that the most consequential CDMO negotiations happen after the contract is signed, covering risk-sharing structures, governance discipline, and the conditions under which trust compounds or collapses. The session was chaired by Matthew Holt, Co-Founder of Collaborative Sourcing, with panelists Salomon Engels, Head of External Manufacturing at Par Health; Mark Goemans, Chief Commercial Officer at Bora Biologics; and Thomas Thunnissen, Director of Procurement and Partnerships at Leyden Labs. The discussion moved through four stages of the partnership life cycle: initial negotiation, contract construction, governance, and risk-sharing. Read the full article here.

  • June 25 · 44 min

    Tariffs, FDA Chaos, and BioSecure in Limbo: How CDMOs Should Operate Under Uncertainty

    Gil Roth, President of the Pharma & Biopharma Outsourcing Association (PBOA), walked CDMO Live Europe delegates through the full matrix of US policy pressures bearing on contract manufacturers, from Section 232 tariffs and most favored nation pricing to FDA workforce collapse and a stalled BioSecure Act. Read the full article here.

  • June 25 · 23 min

    How Sandoz Cut Its Supplier Network by 34%: A Step-by-Step Consolidation Playbook

    At CDMO Live Europe 2026 Maik Talarczyk Head PMO External Supplier Operations, Sandoz, laid out the company’s three-year supplier network consolidation program, detailing a six-step make-vs-buy decision framework that reduced network complexity by 34% against its 2023 baseline. Maik Talarczyk opened with a warning. “The fan is always on – and the shit is always flying.” Sandoz entered 2024 managing approximately 500 finished dose form (FDF) suppliers — a network Talarczyk describes as fragmented and expensive to run. The initial diagnosis was that 20% of suppliers accounted for 80% of sales. But the structural problem ran deeper: commercial and technical operations weren’t talking to each other. Country organizations understood top-line sales and margin. They did not see what was happening in technical operations. Read the full article

  • June 23 · 40 min

    We're joining Life Science Connect. Here's the story...

    "We saw what you guys built and made a decision pretty quickly: we didn't want to compete with that. We wanted to be part of it." Jon Howland, CEO, Life Science Connect Today we are announcing that PharmaSource, CDMO Live and External Manufacturing Leaders will be joining forces with Life Science Connect to create a new events divison. In this special episode, Luke Bilton sits down with Life Science Connect CEO Jon Howland to talk about what's been going on behind the scenes, and what this new chapter means to biopharma outsourcing media and events. Read more on PharmaSource

Showing 1–20 of 25 episodes