Q&A with Thomas E. D'Ambra, AMRI

PharmTech:

How has the increasing focus on biopharmaceuticals affected your business?

Thomas E. D’Ambra, Chairman, CEO, & President of AMRI

D'Ambra:

The changes in how pharma is considering outsourcing are key reasons we rolled out our new AMRI SMARTSOURCING offering, which is designed to provide customers with the ability to customize AMRI's resources, technologies, geographic footprint, and record of accountability and accomplishment to create an ideal offering to meet the needs of their research programs, without the need to compromise on quality, productivity, or timeliness. AMRI SMARTSOURCING also means that we have instituted a number of internal initiatives at improving our performance and customer service, and we have invested in consolidating resources to meet customer preferences.

Therefore, the increased focus on biopharmaceuticals may affect overall industry demand, but we emphatically believe that AMRI is well positioned to benefit from new trends emerging from the tough times of the past couple of years.

PharmTech:

How will the industry remain innovative as it reduces spending on research?

D'Ambra:

The strategic use of outsourcing is a more innovative approach to R&D initiatives. It is likely that some of the reasons for the poor productivity of the recent past in pharma have had to do with a failure of leadership and accountability within these large organizations. If an outsourcing provider is not meeting the needs of its client, the relationship is going to end, the client will find someone else, and the reputation of the outsourcing provider is going to suffer. The Darwinian nature of this accountability is a great catalyst to drive performance. The strong organizations survive and continue to gain market share and the beneficiaries of this are the pharma and biotech companies that make choices based on which outsourcing provider has the resources, talent, and capabilities to best help them succeed without compromise.