CordenPharma to spend close to $1 billion on peptide plants in US, Europe

The Swiss drug services firm CordenPharma plans a giant investment in its peptide manufacturing business over the next 3 years. The company says it will use the roughly €900 million ($980 million) to expand peptide manufacturing facilities at its existing Colorado site and a brand-new facility in Europe.

Strong demand for glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) agonists for weight loss and diabetes is a leading reason for CordenPharma to ramp up its peptide services, CEO Michael Quirmbach says. The demand for peptides has also significantly increased in other fields, such as oncology and radiopharmaceuticals, he adds.

“Overall, the peptide market is growing, and there aren’t enough companies to meet the manufacturing demand. This drove our investment decisions, and the shareholders supported it,” Quirmbach says. In July2022, CordenPharma was acquired by Astorg Partners, a European private equity firm, for over $2.6 billion.

To date, CordenPharma has multiyear contracts worth $3.2 billion to manufacture GLP-1 drugs. One of its major clients is Eli Lilly and Company, whose antidiabetes and weight-loss drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound were approved for sale in the US by the Food and Drug Administration in 2022 and 2023, respectively.

CordenPharma will use part of the new funding to add reactors to synthesize peptides at its facility in Boulder, Colorado. The company will build a new facility in Europe for early-to-late-stage commercial manufacturing.

The company mainly uses the solid-phase method to synthesize peptides. Experts point out that the technique involves the use of large quantities of solventssuch as N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) that are harmful to human health and the enviornment.

Novo Nordisk, Lilly’s competitorin the weight-loss and antidiabetes space, engineers the peptides using yeast-based fermentation. Some chemists say this approach is safer for the environment than solid-phase synthesis.

Quirmbach says CordenPharma is seeking greener ways of making the peptides. “We are actively trying to replace DMF as a solvent and are also looking at ways to recycle the solvents to reduce the environmental impact.”

In 2022, CordenPharma collaborated with the Swedish instrument maker PeptiSystems on a new concept that allows the continuous solid-phase manufacturing of peptides. CordenPharma says this change reduces solvent consumption by at least 40%. It installed the technology at its German plant but not in Boulder.