Shilpa Medicare Launches ‘Hybrid CDMO’ at DCAT Week 2025

India-based Shilpa Medicare is launching a newly-formed, full-service, “hybrid” contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), and taking the occasion of the Drug, Chemical & Associated Technologies Association (DCAT) Week 2025, being held from March 17–20, 2025 in New York City, to make the announcement (1).

With this integrated CDMO, Shilpa said it aims to serve both small and large molecules customers in addition to peptides, with a particular therapeutic specialization in oncology (1). The hybrid model, Shilpa said in a press release, will adopt a dual approach: offering comprehensive discovery, clinical, and commercial outsourcing services, but also including commercially ready, “off-the-shelf” novel formulations for business-to-business (b2b) licensing.

“Our goal is to offer pharmaceutical and biotech customers multiple flexible pathways to bring commercial products to market,” Vishnukant C. Bhutada, managing director of Shilpa Medicare, said in the press release. “On the one hand, they can leverage our development teams, cutting-edge technologies, and world-class facilities in a traditional CDMO partnership—with both our GLP-1 [glucagon-like peptide-1] and biologics services in high demand at DCAT. On the other, we have a pipeline of fully developed products that are available for exclusive licensing, eliminating development risks for our partners. However, we remain strictly a b2b-only company, ensuring we never compete with our clients.”

Further elaborating on Bhutada’s comments, the Shilpa press release confirmed that the company has three late-stage products available for licensing as of the beginning of DCAT Week, and along with multiple other assets in its pipeline, the company’s model allows for pharmaceutical companies to expedite market entry by licensing fully developed products, while retaining Shilpa’s development and manufacturing services (1).

Shilpa’s peptide capabilities, according to information provided in the release, encompass both solid- and solution-phase synthesis, or a combination of the two (1). Integrated facilities provide fill/finish services for cartridges as well as devices, with capacities of 20 million units, or 40 kg API in peptide drug substance production capacity, per year.

The company also operates a dedicated facility for biologics customers that covers drug substance, product, and packaging (1). In addition to monoclonal antibody capacity, Shilpa is expecting a microbial fermentation facility to be operational later in 2025.

“We are building an integrated platform company, and we have a very clear expansion vision to sell global partners,” Keshav Bhutada, director at Shilpa Medicare Group, said in the press release. “So, we expect to sign a number of prominent deals at DCAT [Week]. There is a real shortage globally of full-service partners with our breadth of capabilities from discovery to commercial supply and across multiple modalities whether small molecule, biological, peptide and even GLP-1. Consequently, demand is growing incredibly quickly as those with large [drug substance] and [drug product] capabilities are able to advance projects more quickly for partners.”

Pharmaceutical Technology® Group is covering DCAT Week 2025 in depth during and after the event, and the landing page for all relevant content can be accessed at this link (2).

References

1. Shilpa Medicare. Shilpa Launches ‘Hybrid CDMO’ at DCAT. Press Release. March 11, 2025.
2. Pharmaceutical Technology. DCAT. PharmTech.com (accessed March 14, 2025).