Hi PuddinHead, Do you have some familiarity with this company? If you don’t actually know about the company and were just posting it as an off the cuff idea, let me know and I’ll take it as that.
No, I don’t know about the company yet as I just discovered in in my fundamental scans, but it was really interesting and I thought I would start by tossing it out there.
Here is a little more info…
Top-performing small drugmaker Cambrex (NYSE:CBM) is growing fast by partnering with big pharmaceutical companies.
Cambrex assists big drugmakers and biotech companies, providing processes and active pharmaceutical ingredients to help them start to manufacture commercial quantities of drugs.
It has several hundred customers, but biotech giant Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ:GILD), maker of blockbuster hepatitis C treatment Harvoni, is its biggest customer. Gilead accounted for 24% of revenue in 2014
So to me that sounds like Gilead wants to build a “Lego House” with yellow bricks on the bottom, blue in the middle, red on top and 1 door and 5 windows. So CBM makes all those individual components that allow Gilead to build said house/drug. It also sounds like they might provide some services and processes that can help do that. Maybe they have an efficient process that already puts the yellow and blue legos together and then Gilead just finishes it off.
that discover and commercialize small molecule human therapeutics
Small molecule being the standard drugs constructed through chemical processes, as opposed to biologics (e.g Humira, Enbrel for rheumatoid arthritis). Aspirin and Gilead’s Harvoni for HEP-C are Small Molecules and small molecule drugs still comprise the majority of drugs. Since each of these are composed of smaller components, there is a market for someone to mass produce those components like Cambrex appears to do.
Here is a summary from their website a little like Yahoo’s of course…
About Cambrex
Cambrex Corporation is an innovative life sciences company that provides products, services and technologies to accelerate the development and commercialization of small molecule therapeutics. The Company offers Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (“APIs”), advanced intermediates and enhanced drug delivery products for branded and generic pharmaceuticals. Development and manufacturing capabilities include enzymatic biotransformations, high potency APIs, high energy chemical synthesis, controlled substances and formulation of finished dosage form products. For more information, please visit www.cambrex.com.
Hmmm “enzymatic biotransformations” implies there are also involved in biologics.
Here is a good definition from the FDA
What is a biological product?
Biological products include a wide range of products such as vaccines, blood and blood components, allergenics, somatic cells, gene therapy, tissues, and recombinant therapeutic proteins. Biologics can be composed of sugars, proteins, or nucleic acids or complex combinations of these substances, or may be living entities such as cells and tissues. Biologics are isolated from a variety of natural sources - human, animal, or microorganism - and may be produced by biotechnology methods and other cutting-edge technologies. Gene-based and cellular biologics, for example, often are at the forefront of biomedical research, and may be used to treat a variety of medical conditions for which no other treatments are available.
How do biological products differ from conventional drugs?
In contrast to most drugs that are chemically synthesized and their structure is known, most biologics are complex mixtures that are not easily identified or characterized. Biological products, including those manufactured by biotechnology, tend to be heat sensitive and susceptible to microbial contamination. Therefore, it is necessary to use aseptic principles from initial manufacturing steps, which is also in contrast to most conventional drugs.
Biological products often represent the cutting-edge of biomedical research and, in time, may offer the most effective means to treat a variety of medical illnesses and conditions that presently have no other treatments available.
So even biologics have building blocks that an efficient supplier can provide. Apple doesn’t make its wireless chips, Skyworks does.
…after starting this I decided to do a deep dive and start filling out my template. Several hours into it, I now must go to bed, but will try to finish tomorrow night. Things are looking decent. Will start a new thread when ready.
Pete.
