Antibody Drugs Drive Market Growth
The global biopharmaceutical CDMO market is expected to grow from US$11.12 billion in 2021 to US$18.63 billion in 2026. Under the circumstances, multiple companies in the industry are increasing their investments while working on M&A deals. The examples include Thermo Fisher Scientific, Catalent, Fujifilm and Lonza, which acquired PharmaCell in as early as 2017.
In April this year, SK acquired Yposkesi. More recently, GC Pharma announced an inter-subsidiary merger between GC LabCell and GC Cell. Samsung Biologics announced early this year that it would expand its CDMO business to cover cell and gene therapy products as well as antibody drugs.
CDMO companies accounted for 26 percent of the global pharmaceutical production in 2019 and the ratio is expected to reach 28 percent in 2023. The growth of the global CDMO market is expected to accelerate as the trend of division of labor is increasing worldwide.
At present, antibody drugs make up the largest portion of the market. Specifically, monoclonal antibody drugs account for 36 percent of the market, followed by vaccines (16 percent), recombinant protein drugs (10 percent) and gene therapy drugs (8 percent). The antibody drug segment is likely to keep growing at a rapid pace, given that a number of antibody drugs are in the process of development.