12 May 2023 | Friday | News
BioPharma APAC Interview with Emmanuel Ligner President and CEO, Cytiva and Danaher Group Executive
Discover how the combined technical expertise, talent, and portfolio offerings of these two distinguished brands are driving the next generation of medicines
What is the significance of the union of Pall Life Sciences and Cytiva under the Cytiva name in advancing the development, manufacture, and delivery of therapeutics?
The integration of Pall Life Sciences and Cytiva is significant, and exciting for three reasons.
First, the life sciences business of Pall and Cytiva complement each other. We listened to our customers who told us they want more complete solutions – from research, to development, and agile manufacturing in new modalities, such as mRNA and cell and gene therapy.
Secondly, the combined manufacturing presence is an incredible opportunity to bring new manufacturing sites in valued spaces around the world, in response to the trend in localization and regionalization of manufacturing post-COVID.
Finally, the biotechnology industry is in constant movement and needs a strong collaborator that is capable of creating and innovating the tools needed to advance the next generation of medicines. Here, we have an opportunity to develop digital tools that are going to transform the industry. We’ll now have the scale to do this at every phase – from discovery to delivery.
Our combined portfolio and business strengths will better position us for long-term growth. This is a dream come true.
How does the merger of Pall and Cytiva strengthen the combined company's ability to serve customers across the entire process of discovering, developing, and delivering novel therapeutics?
We’re stronger together and want to be a comprehensive solutions provider to serve our customers at every step in their journey.
We now have the scale, talent, and incredible footprint to help our customers advance therapeutics for the benefit of patients around the world. With nearly 16 000 associates in 40 countries, 36 manufacturing sites, 20 R&D centers and more than 300 years’ heritage of expertise, the new Cytiva is better positioned to help customers solve biotechnology challenges in an era of emerging modalities.
We’ll continue being that strong partner to our customers by focusing on innovation and digitalization, especially in data management. I’m excited about the adoption of digital solutions for our customers to enable flexible, reliable bioprocess development. Through predictive batch, they can reduce the frequency of failed or underperforming batches. Through in-silico process development, they can speed up high performance and flexible processes.
There’s also so much potential around data sharing. We’re exploring how we can help customers save time, money, and increase output by understanding what happened in every stage of a process.
How will the union of these two companies impact the BioPharma industry in the APAC region, and what benefits can customers and stakeholders expect from this new entity?
It’s an exciting time to work in the biotech industry, with the growth of genomic medicine especially in RNA technologies and cell and gene therapies globally and in Asia Pacific. We understand that startups, compared to big biopharma companies in Asia Pacific, are struggling to compete for mature talent, and to train fresh hands. To meet their demands in talent training and system development, we’ll continue to provide Fast Trak Education and Training Program at three centers based in Asia Pacific namely South Korea, China, and India.
We’ve been working hard, and carefully, to make sure the process of transition is as seamless as possible for our customers and stakeholders.
Our customers will have simpler access to expertise, as well as a broader range of products and technologies from one organization to help them advance and accelerate the development of novel therapeutics locally and regionally.
Our stakeholders will continue to see our commitment to sustainability in action by making a powerful impact on People, Planet and Foundation. To do this, we’ll focus on six areas - reducing carbon footprint, using water responsibly, evolving our use of plastics, rethinking packaging, increasing diversity and inclusion, and advancing health and society.
With our customers and stakeholders, we aim to empower the biotech industry to collaborate closely to accelerate the development of next generation of therapeutics and solve some of the world’s major health challenges. I’m excited to see our impact in these areas!
With both Pall and Cytiva bringing a rich heritage dating back hundreds of years, what unique advantages does this combined company bring to the table in terms of technical expertise, talent, and portfolio offerings?
I’m proud to say that both Pall and Cytiva are distinguished brands. By coming together, our customers benefit greatly by tapping into our combined expertise and differentiated portfolio. For example, in upstream bioprocessing, Pall’s iCELLis bioreactor system, which is well known in the market, complements Cytiva’s single-use technology for fluid management. Cytiva also benefits by bringing Pall’s incredible expertise in filtration into our portfolio.
In terms of products, we now have a broad portfolio that can help customers to accelerate therapeutics from discovery to delivery. Our portfolio now includes product brands such as Allegro, Supor, iCELLis, Kleenpak, and Pegasus, in addition to ÄKTA, Amersham, Biacore, FlexFactory, HyClone, MabSelect, Sefia, Whatman, Xcellerex, and Xuri*.
Can you speak to any specific goals or plans the new standalone operating company under the Danaher Corporation has in terms of advancing the development of innovative therapeutics in the coming years?
We are always looking to drive growth and are continually evaluating potential opportunities.
*Allegro, Supor, iCELLis, Kleenpak, Pegasus, ÄKTA, Amersham, Biacore, FlexFactory, HyClone, MabSelect, Sefia, Whatman, Xcellerex, and Xuri are trademarks of Global Life Solutions USA LLC or an affiliate doing business as Cytiva.
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