Helsinn and Cardinal Health co-operate
The pharmaceutical technologies and services segment of Cardinal Health, of Dublin, and Helsinn Chemical Operations, of Biasca in Switzerland, have formed an alliance in the provision of comprehensive drug substance/drug product research, development and manufacturing services.
Cardinal Health's recent acquisition of Magellan Laboratories enhanced its offerings, allowing the company to offer comprehensive development, supply chain and commercialisation solutions across nearly all types of dosage forms.
Helsinn Chemical Operations is part of the privately owned Swiss Helsinn Group, and is focused on pharmaceutical chemical process development and manufacturing. It has three plants providing more than 100m3 of reactor capacity. The company has extensive experience in developing and manufacturing complex multi-step industrial and laboratory processes under GMP. The Group has specialised expertise in the manufacture of high potency active ingredients.
The alliance combines Cardinal Health's capabilities in chemical synthesis route-finding and drug development with Helsinn's scale-up and manufacturing skills for delivering high quality API's. In addition to Cardinal Health's unmatched global expertise in final dosage development and manufacturing, the alliance opens up several new dimensions in outsourcing. Uniting the expertise and resources of the two independent partners and building on a strongly customer focused approach it claims to be able to offer clients a unique, comprehensive and customised solution for drug development and manufacture. 'A client can choose to develop a drug with the complete support of Cardinal Health and Helsinn or progress through the pipeline and select those services which are most suitable at the time,' explained Dr Giorgio Calderari, chief manufacturing officer of the Helsinn Group.
'This approach is even more flexible than that offered by the vertical integration of Big Pharma, since a client need only use a particular service when required, which means lower overhead and less investment,' commented Dr Al Childers of Cardinal Health.