The sustainability series: Reflect, rethink, and reform

The topic of sustainability has become an important focus for most industries across the globe. The health sector is said to contribute around 5% of total greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. As a result, it is an industry that can play a key role in minimizing the effects of global warming.  

Various large pharmaceutical companies including GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), AstraZeneca, and Roche have previously launched major sustainability programs asking their network of suppliers to take action on sustainability commitments and make improvements in emissions, energy, heat, transport, waste, water, and biodiversity.  

As the industry commits to making positive changes to be greener, this report takes an in-depth look at the episodes from our sustainability series where we delve deeper into the conversations we had and provide you with the key takeaways from our guests on the Voices of Biotech podcast.

The ‘Green Elephant’ in the room

The first episode spoke about sustainable single-use products and the significance of data with co-founder and managing director of Green Elephant Biotech, Joel Eichmann. Founded in 2021, the company manufactures labware from plant-based plastic.

Eichmann reinforced how his firm’s single-use products are contributing to making the globe that little bit greener, despite being told a few years ago the need for plant-based plastic labware would not be in demand.

He emphasized how “data is key to creating a sustainability strategy” and called on vendors to “provide the data” as it is their job to do so. Eichmann described the polylactic acid or polylactide (PLA) plastic as a “chicken and egg problem” because “you need a lot of material that recycling institutions will set up a process for, but if no one offers a recycling scheme, then people cannot recycle it” effectively.

While Green Elephant Biotech is “talking to people” about this issue, what “people [in the industry] need is one or two big players to be interested in setting up the infrastructure to get it running, even if it might not be the economical solution at this stage.”

These players do not necessarily have to be from the biotech industry. Instead, because “we see PLA in the food-packaging industry as well” the infrastructure could come from there and then other industries “can implement the processes.”

The need for a connected ecosystem remains clear with Eichmann urging everyone in the sector “to do their part with sustainability” in mind. He said the biotech industry “is quite slow in some ways, which is due to having highly regulated processes and environment.”

However, “in terms of climate change, we do not have too much time. Even when I say collecting data is the first step, this should happen quite fast and should not be taken as a reason to not do anything else. Things need to happen fast, and the data should be used to see where we could have the biggest impact.”

While the industry is one that is “making money, serving the people, and making treatments that is making people better,” he pointed out the significance of healthy people needing “a healthy planet to live on.”

Additionally, “if we want to grow and keep the status quo in terms of sales and revenue we need to contribute to protecting the environment, democracy and society.”

At the ‘Core’

Another player focused on plant-based processes is Core Biogenesis. In July 2022, the firm bagged $10.5 million in a Series A funding round to build a plant-based bioproduction facility in Strasbourg, France. The plant is dedicated to manufacturing growth factors and cytokines for the cell therapy space and cellular agricultural industry.

Quentin Vicard, director of strategy and alliance management at Core Biogenesis, said the company’s technology platform can express recombinant proteins from the seeds of a Camelina sativa oilseed plant. The DNA is then used as the code for the plant to synthesize the proteins (growth factors and cytokines). In turn, this increases the expression yield of its plants and makes the extraction process more efficient and more scalable. 

The molecular farming method does not require the use of bioreactors or automated vertical farming technologies. The photosynthesis mechanism of the plant, meanwhile, enables a carbon negative production.

“There are a lot of advantages in working with plants […] we plant at 40 different locations, [across] three different seasons, allowing us to scale-up.” Consequently, “the cost of goods and cost of manufacturing can be heavily decreased because the scale is much higher.”

Vicard said the firm’s plant-based technologies have a positive effect on the environment because the “carbon footprint of the plant is a lot lower than that of a bioreactor.” He described the plant as “pretty conventional” and noted it is “used heavily in the cosmetic industry and for animal/pet food,” which means sourcing the seeds is relatively simple.

While the advantages were made clear, he also discussed the challenges associated with plant-based technologies. He told listeners how development of the molecule cost more than planned and spoke about the hurdles the firm faces concerning the “regulatory framework, especially on the cell and gene therapy (CGT) side.”

Vicard said Core Biogenesis is dealing with the regulatory framework challenges by “tackling it heavily these days” and explained how nontraditional technologies are typically challenged “a lot” from a regulatory aspect as the current framework is “not sufficient.”

The challenges laid out by Vicard represent how a missing link from the chain can hinder the success of sustainability efforts. While the company’s plant-based technology can help the sector meet sustainability goals, without a regulatory framework that supports methods outside of traditional norms, the ecosystem is not complete.

Education is key

The notion of a connected ecosystem is intrinsically linked to education. Jeffrey Whitford, vice president of sustainability and social business innovation at MilliporeSigma, the life sciences division of Merck KGaA, spoke about how people are at the forefront of sustainability and its goals.

In doing so, Whitford said the people in question can develop an understanding of why and how you are reaching your sustainability aims. While part of this means getting comfortable with the uncomfortable, education (both self and academia) is vital to creating an unbreakable chain for sustainability.

“I do not think we ever lose out by focusing on education. I think you always win,” said Whitford. He described how he went on an “exploratory journey to understand what the education landscape looked like” and what he came to find “was that it is very limited, very, very limited.”

When it comes to educating people about sustainability and its importance, Whitford made it clear he is not “hugging trees […] or skipping round a field of daisies singing Kumbaya.” Instead, he said it is really “about the business value that we can create for the organization that reduces the use of unnecessary materials. It makes things more efficient, [and] it decreases risks.”

Whitford also brought up the importance of the ecosystem and said its significance to sustainability is because “it is a big economic model.” He described how the firm realized “it is really on the processors of the material [and] the waste collectors who have to think about the financial component.”

“I think a lot of the time it is easy to [think] this technological solution works. But […] there are so many other parts [needed] to make that whole thing work. You have to be aware and understand what are the motivations or the drivers for that to work and if it does not work and one of the pieces of the chain breaks, then guess what? You do not have a solution, and you really have a challenge. So, I think this concept of the ecosystem is something we have really been mindful of.”

Rethinking sustainability in CGT

While there are advantages associated with educating the industry about sustainability and different approaches to reach respective goals, Carol Houts, chief strategy officer at cleanroom services equipment firm, Germfree and Josh Ludwig, global director commercial operations at cell and gene therapy (CGT) manufacturing solutions company, ScaleReady spoke about how the sector and its players are still “figuring it out.”

Together, they advocated for the shift towards a more decentralized manufacturing model and the need to “reframe the concept of sustainability in the cell and gene therapy (CGT) space [because] it is about patient access.”

Lout shared her experience of talking to medical professionals in fields where there is a high patient need. She recalled how an oncologist under the current commercial model with the drugs that are approved in cell therapy only has two production slots per month. She questioned him on how he chooses what patient receives the treatment and he answered, “some patients just get lucky.”

Lout asked him “if you had this manufacturing capability, could you serve all the patients and all the need in your location?” He responded “Carol, there's more patients than I can serve, even with some manufacturing capability.”

Though companies can standardize their process by adopting a decentralized manufacturing model – which makes it cheaper and less time consuming – when thinking of these advantages Ludwig asked, “how do we support the really good initiatives out there trying to develop the next wave of manufacturing technicians?”

He spoke of the requirement of PhD holders to carry out specific manufacturing processes. With complex systems and this “certainly” being the case when discovering new methodologies, the sector needs to think about what happens “if you are going to continue to require PhDs to do the manufacturing?”

To tackle this issue, he said “we need to get the skill level down” to be able to produce a sustainable talent pool. The idea of a full ecosystem echoed in Houts’ statement concerning how many players are still “figuring it out” as sustainability is not an individual issue but a collective one.

Coalitions for COP27

An integral part of a full ecosystem involves the need for partnerships. James Choi, executive vice president, chief marketing officer, and head of sales support and global public affairs at Samsung Biologics, spoke about the contract development manufacturing organizations (CDMO’s) role in teaming up with Big Pharma to tackle sustainability.

In July 2023, Samsung Biologics signed an open letter calling on suppliers to commit to climate and sustainability charges. The letter called on biopharma collaborators to speedily move towards a “greener, more efficient, and circular” process. Additionally, it urged suppliers to sign-up to a joint minimum climate and sustainability targets, based around fundamental commitments laid out by the various firms ahead of COP27 in November 2022.

“As a CDMO to our clients that have sustainability targets, we have to be able to demonstrate that the products we are manufacturing for them from our facilities have a certain carbon footprint,” said Choi.

He explained how the firm is working with its clients to define “their overall product footprint so that they can feel confident they have achieved their targets and can publish” this information.

Choi told us “This is an ongoing thing [where] we work collaboratively with our clients to make sure that they have line of sight into the overall carbon footprint.”

The need to collaborate and create an unbreakable ecosystem remained a key theme throughout the conversation.

“There are [clear]synergies” as “we are all trying to get to the same goal.” Choi reinforced this by stating that “studies have shown direct correlation between climate change, global health, and patient health. So, those of us in the healthcare sector feel a moral imperative to lead by example and for us to collaborate, to synergize on our common goals, to really align and standardize the way we track and measure, to establish common standards and a framework that will help drive demand for the energy providers […] because we cannot do it without them to help us get there.”

The premise of everybody collaborating is one that seems simple on the surface, but as Choi outlined, “a lot of this” comes down to economics. He added: “if it was that easy and cheap to do, everyone would do it. But there are some challenges across the supply chains, and that is where the power of the coalition really comes into play, to align everybody, to help drive demand, and [have] more transparency [on] the opportunities.”

The industry needs each other

Remy Martin, commercial manager of UK-based CDMO eXmoor Pharma, discussed the steps the firm has taken to construct a more sustainable facility, the significance of its design, and the need for industry to share advice and initiatives to bolster sustainability success.

Martin explained how when manufacturing a therapy or “any pharmaceutical or biologic,” the process is energy intensive “because of the requirements of a clean room environment that they need to be manufactured in.” Therefore, a manufacturing partner that can help make the process more sustainable and more carbon efficient is “less expensive [and] highly desirable.”

By being more efficient, Martin said “you can do things far more cost effectively.” He dug deeper into the meaning of sustainability and concluded “whilst it is an attractive proposition to many because it aligns with their environmental social governance (ESG) and documentation, sustainability often just means efficiencies.”

Additionally, to build a facility with sustainability in mind, you must keep the design “as flexible as possible.” Martin told us the reason for this is “because we have seen the evolution of the industry over the past 20 years, [and] we know how fast things can change.” The “change” he spoke about can sometimes lead to different manufacturing requirements and eXmoor did not “want to pigeonhole” themselves with their facility design.

Though he made it clear he was “happy to talk” with us about what the CDMO is doing with regards to sustainability, Martin encouraged eXmoor’s “clients and people in the industry [to share] what they are doing in sustainability.” He asked the following question: “Is there any approach or initiatives that we or other companies could benefit from implementing, and what would they like to see being adopted as a kind of industry standard?”

His call for industry and people in the space to collaborate and share advice reinforces the need for an ecosystem to tackle the issue of sustainability.

Buy-in to buildup

While biotech companies are of course part of the sustainability journey in the Life Sciences space, so are the industry conferences that occur every year. Thus, Voices of Biotech brought you a slightly different conversation in this series about sustainability with Claire Macht, portfolio director, Europe and Manuela Hildebrand, regional delivery director, both from the Life Sciences partnering events company EBD Group.

Together, they discussed how sustainability measures are implemented from an operational standpoint at conferences, which ranged from reuseable booths, less food and beverage wastage, more plant-based/vegetarian options, and even covered the much-debated topic of carpet or no carpet lining the exhibition hall floor.

They brought up how difficult it can be to change behaviors with Macht stating “communication plays a huge role in providing people with answers about why it is important in the first place.” By communicating effectively, the event organizers “can make it seamless so that [the attendees] end up doing it without even thinking about it.”

While that is the best-case scenario, there are times where it is more complicated and “you have to be able to provide compelling reasons to people about why we are asking them to do this, why it is going to work, and [ultimately] get their buy-in.”

The ways to create a “buy-in” mentality can range from helping companies to meet their sustainability goals through to educating on how currently “we have the choice to adopt these behaviors […] but probably sooner than many of us would hope, there may come a time where we do not have a choice about doing many of those things.”

Through making those behavior changes now, Macht and Hilderbrand concluded the “shift will be less painful for them, but also for us as well.”

The clear need to work with attendees and staff remained consistent throughout the episode and Hilderbrand mentioned how it is sometimes about just “trying something” out. For example, “we used to have a vegetarian conference day at a three [event], and although Claire and I are both strong believers that if you are feeding several 1,000s of people, it should be a plant-based, […] our delegates are not quite there yet, so we will very likely, at our upcoming events, revert back and still offer a lot of vegetarian, plant-based options, because we know that this is the more sustainable way of sourcing food and providing food for such number of people.”

Through keeping the focus but not making it a fully vegetarian day, the pair said it fuels the “buy-in from our delegates” because reaching sustainability goals is “a journey.”