EVERY DRUG can be made and every disease can be treated. That’s the vision of WuXi AppTec, the contract research, development and manufacturing organization (CRDMO) that helps accelerate timelines to bring breakthrough treatments to the patients who need them most.

As a global CRDMO, WuXi AppTec offers end to- end pharmaceutical services across Europe, Asia, and North America. In 2024 alone, it has helped thousands of customers in over 30 countries transform scientific discoveries into breakthrough therapies. Its integrated platform provides solutions for every stage of drug development, from early discovery and preclinical testing to clinical development and commercial manufacturing, with the goal of getting effective treatments to patients faster.

The company is dedicated to building its platform in Europe in order to support clients locally, anchored by two European sites – one in Germany and one in Switzerland – to facilitate that.

Across Scandinavia, WuXi AppTec is well established and currently serves around 60 companies in pre-clinical drug discovery. Dave Madge, Vice President of Discovery Services, keeps a close eye on the Northern European region, where he feels that a lot of impressive things are happening in life sciences.

“It’s a dynamic landscape with increasing numbers of early-stage companies, since there are more venture capital firms that are building a footprint in Scandinavia, and we also see expansion in the number of incubators in Denmark and Sweden. These bring new opportunities and strategies to translate early-stage ideas from academia towards therapies. That’s a direction that we’re very well plugged into,” Dave Madge explains.

“The dedication in Scandinavia to accelerate the translation of early-stage ideas into patient therapies has been well demonstrated in terms of investment, the provision of infrastructure, and the rate at which experienced drug discovery scientists are embracing the excitement and diversity of early-stage companies. It’s a fantastic change over the last 5-6 years that’s been happening in front of our eyes,” he says.

This is apparent not only with the BioInnovation Institute and Lundbeck Incubator in Copenhagen, but also with the SMILE Venture Hub and Medicon Village in Sweden. When you visit these organisations you are immediately struck by the quality of the science going on and the enthusiasm and collaborative spirit of the tenants.

Dave is well aware of the impact WuXi AppTec, as a CRDMO, has on the life sciences ecosystem from start-ups to big pharma. For smaller companies rapid and cost-effective access to resources and technology is a critical enabling tool, – allowing many ideas to be rapidly evaluated at a time when new data can have a dramatic impact on confidence and strategy.

“We provide our clients with a platform to test and refine their ideas, and then to rapidly develop them to value inflexion points, which ultimately leads to more innovative treatments reaching the patients,” comments Dave.

“Drug discovery is very complex, dependent on many different technologies, and very diverse in terms of different therapeutic areas, different strategies and different types of drugs that can be developed. But there are technologies that can be brought to bear to facilitate and accelerate drug discovery across all the different stages and across all this diversity. For small companies, that’s a complex, and capital-intensive, landscape to navigate,” Dave Madge explains.

“One of our major contributions is early investment into technology platforms which are then made available to all our clients, to facilitate and accelerate their programs. As a big company we can afford to do that, we can afford to distribute the cost across our larger client base, whereas for smaller companies it’s simply not capital efficient or good use of their resources to develop those platforms,” Dave Madge says.

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