PharmaSource Podcast

Gil Roth, President of the Pharma & Biopharma Outsourcing Association (PBOA), walked CDMO Live Europe delegates through the full matrix of US policy pressures bearing on contract manufacturers, from Section 232 tariffs and most favored nation pricing to FDA workforce collapse and a stalled BioSecure Act.
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At CDMO Live Europe 2026 Maik Talarczyk Head PMO External Supplier Operations, Sandoz, laid out the company’s three-year supplier network consolidation program, detailing a six-step make-vs-buy decision framework that reduced network complexity by 34% against its 2023 baseline.
Maik Talarczyk opened with a warning. “The fan is always on – and the shit is always flying.”
Sandoz entered 2024 managing approximately 500 finished dose form (FDF) suppliers — a network Talarczyk describes as fragmented and expensive to run. The initial diagnosis was that 20% of suppliers accounted for 80% of sales. But the structural problem ran deeper: commercial and technical operations weren’t talking to each other. Country organizations understood top-line sales and margin. They did not see what was happening in technical operations.
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"We saw what you guys built and made a decision pretty quickly: we didn't want to compete with that. We wanted to be part of it." Jon Howland, CEO, Life Science Connect
Today we are announcing that PharmaSource, CDMO Live and External Manufacturing Leaders will be joining forces with Life Science Connect to create a new events divison.
In this special episode, Luke Bilton sits down with Life Science Connect CEO Jon Howland to talk about what's been going on behind the scenes, and what this new chapter means to biopharma outsourcing media and events.
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Mike Schaefers, Chief Operating Officer at Simtra BioPharma, outlined what it takes to build durable CDMO partnerships in injectable manufacturing, why regional supply chains have become a permanent feature, and how early-phase collaboration directly shortens time to market.

"The challenge is not getting better biology. It's building a better system to carry the biology forward," says Richard van Rijnsoever.
Debby Vermeer and Richard van Rijnsoever are co-founders of ExpediteBio, a Netherlands-based venture focused on accelerating antibody and protein therapeutics from discovery to first-in-human study. Debby also co-leads the biologics workstream at Oncode Accelerator, a national initiative working to accelerate cancer therapy development, e.g., by building infrastructure in the Netherlands.
On the PharmaSource podcast, Debby and Richard spoke about the structural reasons biologics programs fail to reach patients, how their ASCEND framework addresses those failures, and what a more functional European biologics ecosystem could look like. Their conversation is a practical guide for biotech CEOs and CMC leaders navigating the most expensive stretch of early-stage drug development.
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