Global Single-Use Network Supports Assurance of Supply

Welcome to Gencast, a sponsored podcast series brought to you by Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News. I'm your host, Jeff Pugaliskis. Over the past twenty plus years, single use systems have been steadily climbing toward the top of the tools utilized by bio manufacturers for the commercial scale production of critical therapeutic products. Yet much like for several other areas of the biotech and pharma industries, COVID nineteen created an inflection point for this technology, generating a significant demand that will shape the market for many years. Although with that considerable demand comes the need to focus on the key aspects driving growth and finding the appropriate solutions to challenges that invariably arise when technologies are being developed and utilized rapidly, a seemingly common thread throughout this podcast series. Now this is the third and final episode of Gencast where doctor Gerard Brophy, the executive vice president of biopharma production at Avantor, joins me. We sat down to discuss several essential facets of single use systems and some ways to help manage risk and decrease the intricacies most often associated with single use supply chains. This is an area of bioprocessing that has been of great interest to many of you in the gen audience, so I know you'll definitely want to keep listening. Thanks everyone for joining us for this third edition of Gencast with Avantor and doctor Jared Brophy. We are gonna be discussing some global single use network support assurance of supply today and kind of dive a little bit more deeper into the conversation that we started, two podcasts ago. So if you haven't seen any of those podcasts yet, please, do or say listen to those podcasts yet. Please do check those out. So, Jared, thanks for being with us again. Really appreciate it. Thanks, Jeff. Happy to be here. So, Jared, the first question I have is that there's been some rapid growth in single use systems in biopharma over the past several years. What do you see as the major drivers? There are quite a few. But if I were to pick two, it would be nimbleness and speed. Single use facilities just enable that. And that's especially important for clinical trial volumes of drugs and and also to mitigate those risks prior to approval. When you need significant amounts, but maybe, you know, you haven't got the time or necessarily the confidence to to double down on CapEx expenditure. But we also see significant advantages for single use with the emergence of new modalities. Think of things like viral vectors, gene therapies. And and, you know, those are emerging platforms, so the ability to change up process development protocols are are key, and single use just gives that more flexibility. For multiproduct lines, just think of CDMOs and CMOs where a new drug may need to be made on the same facility. You know, intuitively, you can understand how single use enables and supports that kind of flexibility of facility usage in …