PharmaSource Podcast

“Twenty years ago, who knew that ADCs and next-generation bioconjugates were going to be so exciting, so successful?” Campbell Bunce , Chief Scientific Officer at Abzena, reflects on the strategic positioning that has placed his company at the forefront of one of pharma’s fastest-growing segments. Campbell leads a global team spanning discovery, development, and GMP manufacturing at Abzena, where...

“When I walked into the tech transfer, we were a million dollars over budget, six months behind schedule, and struggling to make a single successful batch,” says  Amy Gamber . Amy Gamber, Executive Director, Lifecycle Lead at Kyverna Therapeutics, specializes in crisis recovery for late-stage biotech and cell and gene therapy programs. With 20+ years of CMC leadership experience at Atara Biotherap...

“We have to be transparent down to the last person in the organization, what the organization is doing, and where the issues are. We have to celebrate wins. We have to talk about the good things people do.” Markus Sieger  serves as CEO of Polpharma Group, one of Central and Eastern Europe’s largest pharmaceutical manufacturers. With 25 years at the company, and 10  years as CEO, he has transformed...

“Our goal is to be recognized for exceptional reliability in our services and manufacturing, while helping our customers bring the most innovative medicines to market.” Dr. Michael Quirmbach , CEO and President of  CordenPharma , has overseen remarkable growth at the full-service CDMO since joining in 2014. Under his leadership, the company has tripled its workforce to 3,000 employees and increase...

"If you can't demonstrate international quality standards, nobody is going to take a chance on a million-dollar batch to save a few dollars on their manufacturing. It just won't happen." Eric Langer is President of BioPlan Associates, where he has systematically documented the evolution of the biomanufacturing industry since the early 2000s. In the latest PharmaSource podcast epi...

“The world can change overnight. We have to accept volatility as part of the world we live in.” Peter DeYoung , CEO of Piramal Global Pharma, has spent 13 years with the Piramal Group, navigating the complexities of pharmaceutical manufacturing across consulting, investing, and operating roles. His engineering background and cross-continental experience position him to lead a billion-dollar pharma...

"We are not in a transient moment - this will affect industry profitability for decades. The previous era of rule-based international trade is gone" Frank Binder , Managing Director at GSCA (Global Supply Chain Advisors) and former Head of Supply Chain at Santen and Celgene, has watched the pharmaceutical supply chain undergo unprecedented disruption in 2025. The wave of US tariff announ...

“We became an analytical powerhouse before we started offering integrated process development and manufacturing. That’s what differentiates us.” Sigma Mostafa , Chief Scientific Officer, and  Katie Edgar , Chief Business Officer at KBI Biopharma , explain how technical depth in analytics and proprietary cell line technology create competitive advantage in an increasingly crowded CDMO market. Sigma...

“Despite the volatility, the industry is getting some positive energy and renewed confidence” Jeremie Trochu , Chief Executive Officer at  Ardena , has spent two decades building and scaling businesses across the biopharma sector. He was part of the leadership team that transformed Catalent from a private equity spinoff into a publicly traded global CDMO, where he led multiple successful acquisiti...

"Life has not become simpler and easier. It's become more complex. Success requires acknowledging this complexity early and building flexibility into every aspect of the business model.” Renée Aguiar-Lucander is the CEO of Hansa Biopharma, appointed in April 2025. Renée brings rich expertise from seven years leading Calliditas Therapeutics through a dual NASDAQ listing and the first appro...

“Poland is no longer an emerging market. It’s a partnering market.” Dr. Magdalena Kulczycka , founder of the Biotech Innovation Institute, is a molecular biologist with experience spanning academia, entrepreneurship, and venture capital. Her institute fosters biotech growth from lab to market through consulting, venture building, and business development, with particular focus on Poland’s life sci...

“We invest emotionally and intellectually in their journey—when their product reaches patients, that’s our success too.” Janet Hoogstraate , CEO of NorthX Biologics, brings ~30 years of pharmaceutical experience spanning from preclinical development to GMP production for marketed products, with leadership roles at Valneva and AstraZeneca. Her experience from both the CDMO and sponsor sides contrib...

“The differentiator in our business isn’t the equipment and the facility—it’s the scientists working with customers to create assays and solve complex scientific challenges.” Leon Wyszkowski  has spent nearly three decades in drug development, including 20 years at Thermo Fisher Scientific in roles spanning clinical services, CDMO operations, and now analytical services. His perspective on the evo...

“This cluster has such a long history—it’s about chemistry meeting innovation, trading roots, and an open mindset. That unique mix created something remarkable.” Dr. Christof Klöpper , CEO of Basel Area Business & Innovation, brings a rare combination of academic rigour and practical experience to understanding biotech ecosystems. With a doctorate focused on innovation processes in biotechnolo...

"It costs about $2.5 billion to bring a drug to the market, and only about 30% of those actually succeed or meet their commercial goals when they get to the market." Manufacturing leaders typically focus on the technical challenges directly in front of them—process validation, tech transfer timelines, capacity utilization. But understanding the commercial landscape offers critical intell...

“The key word is curiosity. That curiosity helps you to question and improve not only yourself, but also your processes, your systems, and how you interact with different stakeholders.” Jeroen Janssens , External Manufacturing Technical Operations Lead at MSD, provides insights through a technical lens on how one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies approaches biologics manufacturing pa...

“We have strong scientific foundations and manufacturing excellence. Now we’re creating the ecosystem to help biotechs scale and compete globally,” says  Federico Vigano , Board Member of Assobiotec. Federico Vigano, Country Manager for Vertex in Italy and Greece, brings extensive pharmaceutical leadership experience from roles at AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim and GSK. As a board member of  As...

“CDMOs are partners with deep, extensive technical expertise that can be leveraged strategically—not just a restaurant where you pick from a menu.” Marta Kijanka , founder of MK Bioconsultancy, is a strategic project manager and CMC consultant who guides early-stage biotech companies through the complexities of manufacturing development, from discovery through regulatory readiness. With her career...

“The complexity is there’s an antibody component, linker-payloads with highly potent toxic agents that need high containment, and linking a biologic with a highly potent small molecule – it’s inherently challenging.” Dr. Harch Ooi , VP of Manufacturing and Chemistry at IsoBio Inc., brings 17 years of specialized expertise in  antibody-drug conjugate  (ADC) manufacturing and external partnerships f...

"Sweden has been ranked the European Union's innovation leader for the fifth or sixth year in a row, and we're second globally. We have 4,000 life science companies—a remarkably high number for a country of 10 million people." Dr Marjo Puumalainen , International Director of SwedenBIO, brings extensive life science experience from both startup environments and academic research....

Carole Delauney warns that sterile injectable manufacturing “is not just fill-finish”—a misconception that can cost biotech companies millions and even derail entire drug development programs. She notes, “This is unfortunately not commonly recognized in the industry, but it is a very important topic.” Carole Delauney, a sterile injectable manufacturing expert with nearly two decades of technical e...

“Siloed procurement is a big problem. We’ve recently worked with a client where a CDMO was selected simply because it could start two weeks before another. Ultimately, that led to about an 18-month delay in the project altogether.” Matthew Holt , Co-founder and Managing Director at Collaborative Sourcing, brings extensive pharmaceutical procurement expertise, from supply planning operations to man...

 "Outsourcing is about giving the things you don't excel at to someone who does them exceptionally well. That's what speeds development and delivery," says Kindeva’s CEO, Milton Boyer. Milton brings nearly 30 years of pharmaceutical manufacturing experience as a contract manufacturer. He spent the first half of his career in drug substances and APIs, and the latter half in sterile drug product man...

“A strategic partnerships is not a transactional relationship – it’s a partnership that should last. If we incentivise through co-investments and risk sharing, the partner can grow their business while enabling us to achieve cost and volume targets.” –  Shilpi Ghosh Shilpi Ghosh , who leads Roche’s global CDMO operations, brings extensive expertise from chemical engineering and supply chain leader...

“Pharma consulting right now is an overgrown patch of weeds. Everybody’s just doing their own thing. It’s the Wild West compared to what it could be – an English garden.” – Ray Sison Ray Sison , founder of SCxCMC exclusively speaks to the PharmaSource podcast about the launch of the  Society of Professional Pharmaceutical Consultant s (SOPPhC) In the latest PharmaSource podcast episode, Ray explai...