The education programs at DCAT Week 2025, held March 17–20, in New York, featured senior executives and thought leaders providing perspectives on key issues impactful to the business of bio/pharma development and manufacturing and the customer–supplier relationship. 

By Patricia Van Arnum, Editorial Director, DCAT, pvanarnum@dcat.org

Measuring industry performance and outlook
How did the bio/pharmaceutical industry perform in 2024, and what can be expected in 2025 and beyond? The Pharma Industry Outlook program at DCAT Week 2025, the flagship event of the Drug, Chemical & Associated Technologies Association (DCAT), provided valuable insights from leading experts at IQVIA, regarded as the gold standard for business intelligence for the global bio/pharmaceutical industry. Graham Lewis, Vice President, Global Pharma Strategy, IQVIA, provided the latest market data, analysis, and trends for: overall market growth on a value and volume basis; growth prospects for innovator and generic drugs; the market outlook for leading therapeutic sectors; and growth rates for the major developed and emerging markets. He also provided perspective on how evolving policy on drug pricing and trade in the US may impact industry performance. A detailed summary of his presentation will be provided in an upcoming issue of DCAT Value Chain Insights.

It is new product development that is the lifeblood of the industry, but what product types will be at the center of that innovation? Small molecules have historically dominated the industry on a volume and value basis, but growth in biologic-based drugs has outpaced growth of small molecules. At the Pharma Industry Outlook program at DCAT Week, Jack Brocklehurst, Manager, Strategy Consulting, IQVIA, provided a detailed market analysis on the mix between small molecules and biologics as well as the growth opportunities for certain new modalities: antibody drug conjugates; bi- / multi-specific antibodies, radioligand therapies, cell and gene therapies, and RNA therapies. A detailed summary of his presentation will be provided in an upcoming issue of DCAT Value Chain Insights.

GLP-1 agonists and beyond
One of the great market success stories in the industry has been glucagon-like peptide (GLP-1) agonists, which have taken the industry by storm with an unprecedented ascent and earning them a place among the industry’s blockbusters. In the DCAT Week program, What’s on the Horizon: New Modalities & Promising Drug Classes, Richard DiMarchi, Ph.D., a globally renowned researcher and former Group Vice President at Eli Lilly and Company and Novo Nordisk, who is widely recognized for his pioneering work that laid the foundation for the development of GLP-1 agonists, provided a first-hand account of the development journey of GLP-1 agonists and his perspectives of the future of drug development, including the role of new modalities.

Dr. DiMarchi is the co-recipient of the 2024 Mani L. Bhaumik Breakthrough of the Year Award by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, former decade-long Chairman of the Peptide Therapeutics Foundation, co-founder of eight successful  biotech companies, and a widely recognized international authority on macromolecular medicines. He sat down for a special one-on-one interview with Lu Chen, Ph.D. & M.B.A., Managing Director & Partner, Health Care Practice Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and recent co-author of a BCG analysis of the market potential of new modalities.

Manufacturing, metrics, and the supply chain
Several of the education programs at DCAT Week 2025 addressed pivotal issues in manufacturing and the supply chain, including risk management, as well as how the customer-supplier relationship is evolving.

Innovation at work
Innovation is essential for achieving operational excellence and delivering value. The Partnering for Innovation in Manufacturing & Supply program featured three case examples on how bio/pharma companies and their partners collaborated to resolve difficult challenges that arose in development, manufacturing, or the supply chain.

Fernando Otero, Associate Vice President, External Manufacturing, MSD International Business GmbH, and Maria Elena Guadagno, Technical Operations & Business Executive Director, BSP Pharmaceuticals, spoke on how the companies collaborated to optimize a filling process and related device design for a challenging drug product. Sheng Cui, Ph.D., Chief Manufacturing Officer, NewAmsterdam Pharma, and Luke Wilson, Senior Director of Commercial Operations, Biotech, Thermo Fisher Scientific, spoke on how the companies partnered to manage global clinical trial material supply for a late-stage drug candidate. And Matt Schnecke, Senior Leader of Supply Chain & Operations, Aquestive Therapeutics, and Jamie Shah, President, Chem Impex, provided insight on how the companies partnered to resolve cost, regulatory, and operational challenges in sourcing a critical and difficult-to-source raw material for a drug-delivery system.

Building resilient supply chains
Employing effective strategies to assess and mitigate risk is crucial to building resiliency in supply chains. In an ever-changing global landscape, this becomes even more challenging where geopolitical and other unforeseen events come into play. The DCAT Week program, Achieving Supply Chain Resiliency Amid Geopolitical Risk, provided insights from an executive panel from within and outside the industry on best practices and lessons learned on how to prepare, monitor, and respond to potential or actual disruptions due to geopolitical events and other macro environmental factors, including evolving trade policies. The panel discussion featured Lisa Martin, Senior Vice President and Chief Procurement Officer, GSK; Sally Macaluso, Chief Procurement Officer, GE HealthCare; Alejandro Fernandez, Director, Product Planning & Fulfillment, Cisco; and Carla La Montagna, Senior Sourcing Director, Biologics and Packaging. The panel discussion was moderated by Derron Stark, EY-Parthenon Partner, Strategy & Transactions – Life Sciences, Supply Chain, Ernst & Young LLP.

Measuring pharma customer–supplier performance
Strong and mutually beneficial customer–supplier relations are always of importance, but they have taken on even greater significance as companies navigate unique challenges to assure supply of critical materials and services in a fast-changing global environment. While these developments have not changed the traditional customer–supplier relationship, they are making bio/pharma companies more aware of how their supplier relationships can impact their ability to deliver value to key stakeholders: patients and investors.

Metrics to evaluate supplier performance are common, but how about measuring the performance of customers? Do pharmaceutical companies seek the input from their suppliers on how they are performing as a customer, and in turn, how do suppliers evaluate the performance of their customers? And more importantly, are pharma companies and suppliers aligned in what constitutes a “customers of choice” or “preferred customers” of their suppliers?

The DCAT Week program, What Makes a Customer of Choice: Are Pharma Companies & Suppliers Aligned?, adressed those questions by examining the efforts bio/pharma companies are making to becoming preferred customers of their suppliers, how suppliers are designating those “customers of choice,” and what benefits customers and suppliers receive from such efforts.

To provide DCAT Member Companies further insight into this evolving customer–supplier dynamic, and to benchmark their own journey along it, DCAT’s Research and Benchmarking Committee focused its 2025 study on this topic, and the DCAT Week program highlighted findings from an upcoming detailed report to be released to DCAT Member Companies in May (May 2025).

An executive panel, composed of members from the DCAT Research & Benchmarking Committee, provided a “buy-and-sell-side view” of this very important issue.  The executive panel featured Vince Ricevuto, Vice President of Research & Development, Capital, Logistics, and Energy Procurement, GSK; Aatosh Chauhan, Executive Director, Strategy & Operations, Small Molecule External Manufacturing, Merck & Co. Inc.; Subramanya Nayak, Ph.D, Director, CMC Supply Chain and Program Strategy, AbbVie; Carla Vozone, PharmD, Vice President, Specialty Drug Delivery, Catalent Pharma Solutions; and Rina Chokshi, Ph.D., Global Commercial Marketing Director, Pharma Solutions, IFF.

Further information about the upcoming report, to be released in May, may be found here.