Samsung Biologics is moving away from a contract manufacturing organization (CMO)-centered business structure and increasing the proportion of its contract development organization (CDO) business. The strategy is to strengthen research and development (R&D) capabilities in order to respond preemptively to the increasingly diversified global biopharmaceutical market.

On the 15th (local time), at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference (JPMHC), the world’s largest pharmaceutical and biotech investment event held in San Francisco, USA, Lee Sang-myeong, Head of CDO Development at Samsung Biologics, said, “In current antibody therapeutics, the share of substances with increasingly complex structures is growing,” adding, “We plan to focus on high-difficulty antibody drugs and secure leadership in high value-added areas.”

Samsung Biologics’ business is broadly divided into CMO and CDO. CMO is the business of producing biopharmaceuticals whose design has already been completed, and in semiconductor terms, it is similar to Taiwan’s TSMC, which conducts contract manufacturing (foundry). CDO involves designing biopharmaceuticals and, in the semiconductor industry, corresponds to the fabless (design) business conducted by companies such as Nvidia and Qualcomm.

The reason Samsung Biologics is seeking to strengthen its competitiveness in the CDO business is that the forms of antibody therapeutics are becoming increasingly diverse. When the company was founded in 2011, all antibody therapeutics took the form of monoclonal antibodies, but now antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), which attach drugs to antibodies to eliminate only specific cells such as cancer cells, and multispecific antibodies, which connect two or three “arm-like” functional regions of antibodies, are being developed. Lee noted, “Monoclonal antibodies account for less than half of our CDO business.”

Once a drug developed through CDO is commercialized, its production is naturally likely to be entrusted to the same company. In other words, the CDO business enables early “lock-in” of client companies. Lee emphasized, “The CDO business is an investment for the future.”

Samsung Biologics plans to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to differentiate itself in the global CDO market. The company intends to combine around eight years of accumulated CDO data with AI to enhance development feasibility. It also plans to launch a drug product (DP) business for antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) therapeutics, a segment of antibody drugs that is growing rapidly.

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