Panel: CDMOs as Critical Partners in the Biopharmaceutical Ecosystem. The Challenges and Trends of CDMO Industry in the Past, Present and Future

  • Analyzing How Contract Development and Manufacturing Organizations (CDMO’s) have transformed over the years, from being merely service providers to becoming indispensable partners in the biopharmaceutical ecosystem.
  • Examining the challenges CDMO’s have faced in meeting the increasing demand for biopharmaceutical products and the strategies employed to overcome capacity limitations.
  • Highlighting the importance of collaborative partnerships between biopharmaceutical companies and CDMO’s in driving innovation and accelerating drug development timelines.
  • Discussing the technical challenges faced by CDMO’s in bioprocessing, such as scalability, process optimization, and future platform technology convergence.
  • Exploring the role of CDMO’s in supporting the development and manufacturing of complex personalized medicine (C&GT) and the challenges they face in this rapidly evolving field.
  • Forecasting the future trends of the CDMO industry and identifying emerging opportunities and potential disruptions that will shape its trajectory in the coming years.

Lars Petersen
President and CEO
FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies

Lars is a visionary leader with over 30 years of experience in Life Science including his tenure at FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies.

In 2019 when FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies acquired the Biogen site in Hillerød, Denmark, he assumed the role of COO for the site, and he most recently served as the Head of the Large-Scale business unit in charge of manufacturing sites in Denmark and Holly Springs, North Carolina, US. Lars has been responsible for the Global Large Scale Commercial operation including full profit and loss accountability as well as the responsibility for over $6.2 Billion global expansions both in Hillerød, Denmark, and Holly Springs, NC.

Lars has held leadership positions with Biogen, Genentech/Roche, Novo Nordisk, Novozymes and NNE, and he has successfully executed projects in Europe, China and the US.

Lars holds a master’s degree from the Technical University of Denmark.

Rahul Singhvi
Co-Founder & CEO
Resilience, Inc.

Rahul Singhvi is a global leader in the Life Sciences industry and is co-founder and CEO of the biomanufacturing company, Resilience (National Resilience, Inc.). Prior to co-founding Resilience in 2020, Rahul was an Operating Partner at Flagship Pioneering, where he was responsible for founding and operating companies launched from Flagship’s innovation foundry, Flagship labs. Before joining Flagship, Rahul was the Chief Operating Officer of Takeda’s Vaccine Business Unit where he was responsible for worldwide vaccine CMC and manufacturing operations. Before Takeda, Rahul was President and CEO of Novavax, Inc. where he transformed the company from a specialty pharmaceutical business into a leading vaccine company. Rahul’s career began at Merck & Co in 1994, where he held several positions of increasing responsibility in R&D and manufacturing.

Rahul graduated as the top-ranked chemical engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur in India, and earned both his master’s and doctoral degrees in Chemical Engineering from MIT. He earned his MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania where he graduated as a Palmer Scholar.

Rahul serves on the Board of Trustees of the Keck Graduate Institute, and on the Board of Directors for Codexis (Nasdaq: CDXS), and Garuda Therapeutics (private).

David Y. H. Chang
President and Chief Technology Officer
WuXi Advanced Therapies

Dr. David Chang has more than 30 years of industrial experience. Before his current role, he was Chief Executive Officer WuXi AppTec Advanced Therapies Unit (ATU), prior to joining WuXi he was Corporate VP and Head of Cell Therapy Global Manufacturing, of Celgene Corporation; the Global Head of Engineering and Strategy at Roche based in Basel, Switzerland; the VP/Site Head of Roche Shanghai Technical Operations in China. Earlier in his career, Dr. Chang worked at Genentech as the Senior Director of Global Manufacturing Science and Technology and as the Director of Process Development in its Oceanside, CA site. He was also formerly at Biogen Idec as Director of Cell Culture R&D, at BASF Bioresearch as a cell culture group leader, and at Schering-Plough Research Institute as a process development engineer. Dr. David Chang obtained his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from National Taiwan University in Taiwan and Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in biochemical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.