Contract manufacturers have carved out a lucrative niche within the biopharma industry, and the value of their collective capacity and production agility was on full display during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, several years on, Pfizer CentreOne—the pharma giant's integrated contract manufacturing organization (CMO)—is leveraging lessons learned from the pandemic as it works to redefine the nature of the developer-manufacturer paradigm.

The company’s goal is to move away from the sort of “transactional function” CMOs have traditionally performed in favor of stronger long-term partnerships with a narrower pool of customers, Jim Donovan, Pfizer CentreOne’s vice president, said in a recent interview with Fierce Pharma.

“We want a much deeper relationship with a lesser number of clients,” he explained, referring to the goal as a recent strategic pivot for the company.

As opposed to being “everything for everyone,” Pfizer CentreOne aims to be “a little bit exclusive” moving forward as it hunts for partners that are willing to sit down and hash out a joint plan around a product’s entire life cycle, Donovan said.

By focusing on a smaller group of clients, Pfizer CentreOne hopes it can build credibility and grow partnerships beyond single assets to encompass broader portfolios from repeat customers, he added. 

Pfizer CentreOne is one of the industry’s longest-running integrated CDMOs, and it enjoys the ability to tap into Pfizer’s vast manufacturing network, which spans 35 sites around the globe.

Breaking things down by dose form, Pfizer CentreOne conducts the bulk of its oral solid dose (OSD) manufacturing across three Pfizer sites in Italy, Germany and Ireland. 

Sterile injectable manufacturing primarily takes place at facilities in Spain, Belgium, Sweden, Croatia, and Kansas in the U.S. And for antibody-drug conjugates, the CDMO operates out of sites in Pearl River, New York, and North Creek, Washington. 

As for the modalities garnering the most attention among Pfizer CentreOne’s customers, there continues to be a big appetite for ADCs and biologics, with biosimilars proving especially popular, Donovan noted. Meanwhile, interest in mRNA, particularly in rare diseases, has remained steady, he added.

Pfizer CentreOne is also hoping to capture more work in the GLP-1 space, both through its established sterile injectables infrastructure and its OSD network, which could come in handy as developers increasingly look to the potential of oral incretin medicines for diabetes, weight loss and other metabolic conditions, Donovan pointed out.

The obesity market represents a huge and still largely untapped opportunity for the industry, with GlobalData predicting earlier this year that the field could reach collective sales of $173.5 billion by 2031. 

As big pharmas and small biotechs alike put their chips behind GLP-1 programs, hard manufacturing assets and raw production capacity aren't the only factors developers are considering when linking up with contract manufacturers, Donovan noted. 

“This space is developing rapidly, and time is of the essence here,” he explained. 

“It seems like we’re starting to pivot away from price and it’s more about time,” he continued. “Time to market, time to file.”

As CMO customers increasingly prioritize the momentum behind their projects, Donovan touted the “light speed behaviors” Pfizer developed during and retained after the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I truly believe that you have to go through a storm and come out of it to really see the positives,” he said. “I think what COVID did for us is it really drove the importance of what contract manufacturing can deliver to the patient and to the industry as a whole.”