Building Resilience for the Future of Biopharma Innovation

Biotech Building Resilience for the Future of Biopharma Innovation Aug 17, 2026 8:00am Biotech At a time when parts of the biotech sector continue to face growing scientific complexity and a rapidly shifting environment, resilience has become a defining theme across the industry.One common misconception today is that resilience is primarily about geographic duplication or supply chain redundancy. Those things matter, but they are only part of the equation. According to Dr.

Steve Yang, Co-CEO of WuXi AppTec, true resilience means having systems that can continue advancing innovation as science evolves and the external environment changes, without sacrificing speed or quality.In a conversation with Fierce Biotech, Steve discusses why complexity has become the industry's biggest source of fragility, how infrastructure and integrated execution can help innovators keep pace with the science, and what is needed in the next era of biopharma innovation.Fierce Biotech: There is a lot of discussion today about uncertainty, whether in scientific complexity, capital markets, or trade. Yet innovation continues to move forward. What do you think that tells us?Steve Yang: I think it reflects the resilience of the industry itself.

It is true that the environment surrounding drug development is becoming more complex, but drug development remains a long-term endeavor measured in years, sometimes decades.Take PROTACs as an example. The first PROTAC medicine was approved earlier this year, but the original concept of heterobifunctional degraders emerged nearly three decades ago. Since 2016, we have been building capabilities to support PROTACs and other emerging modalities, which has given us a front-row seat to the field's evolution.

Along the way, we have seen periods of excitement, skepticism, and uncertainty. There were fundamental scientific questions about whether targeted protein degradation could become a viable therapeutic approach, mainly because it’s beyond the “Rule of Five”.Yet researchers, biotech companies, pharmaceutical companies, and service providers continued to invest, learn, and refine the science. Over time, what began as an intriguing idea evolved into a new class of medicines that can benefit patients, despite technical challenges, changing market conditions, and inevitable setbacks along the way.

To me, that is what industry resilience looks like.Fierce Biotech: You mentioned the word “resilience.” From your vantage point working across a large number of global programs, where do you see the biggest points of fragility in drug development today?Steve Yang: I think the industry often focuses on the visible sources of fragility, such as tariffs, supply chains, or geopolitical developments. Those issues matter, but from what we see across thousands of programs, the biggest fragility in drug development today is not external disruption. It is the growing complexity of turning scientific breakthroughs into medicines.Twenty years ago, much of the industry focused on small molecules and monoclonal antibodies.

Today, innovation involves peptides, oligonucleotides, antibody-drug conjugates, targeted protein degraders, cell therapies, and many other emerging modalities. What is interesting is that the scientific challenge is no longer limited to discovering a promising molecule. In many cases, the biology has already been identified and tested, or even validated.

The challenge is whether the industry can efficiently translate that biology into medicines. In other words, our ability to generate innovation is advancing faster than our ability to develop and manufacture it.We see this trend particularly clearly in areas such as peptides and oligonucleotides. These modalities are generating tremendous excitement because of their potential to address previously difficult targets.

But they also require highly specialized process development, analytical characterization, access to specialized starting materials, and manufacturing infrastructure. In many cases, the industry is still building the playbook while simultaneously trying to advance products into the clinic and toward commercialization.Beyond the science itself, companies are also operating in an environment that increasingly emphasizes capital efficiency. Capital remains available for compelling science, but investors are becoming more selective and focused on how efficiently companies can generate meaningful data, reach key milestones, and create value.

This has changed the meaning of speed. Historically, speed often meant executing established processes more quickly. Today, speed is about solving new scientific and technical challenges within development timelines that have not become any less demanding.

In many ways, capital discipline amplifies the consequences of scientific sophistication.As complexity increases, no single organization is likely to have all the answers. That is why collaboration is becoming more important than ever. To me, that is how the industry can avoid fragility and build resilience in the next era of biopharma innovation.

Beyond being an option, collaboration is becoming part of the infrastructure required for innovation itself.Fierce Biotech: You describe collaboration as part of the infrastructure for innovation. In practical terms, what does that infrastructure look like today?Steve Yang: One lesson from technology is that infrastructure often needs to be built before it is fully utilized. The same is becoming true in biopharma.

By the time a modality becomes mainstream, it is often too late to start building the capabilities required to support it. That is why we think about infrastructure not simply as physical facilities, but as a long-term investment in future innovation.Take our Middletown, Delaware site as an example. As more molecules advance toward late-stage development and commercialization, the industry will need greater drug product development and manufacturing capacity.

By investing ahead of demand, we can help ensure that sufficient capacity is available when promising programs reach critical stages. Another thing we have learned is that infrastructure must be built fast. I remember when a typical plant ramp-up took more than 22 months.

In other words, it could take nearly two years for a new facility to reach full operational capacity. We knew that was not efficient enough for an industry moving at today's pace.To address this, we made two important changes. First, we built a comprehensive in-house training system that enables new employees to quickly develop the technical skills and operational experience needed to work effectively within our quality and manufacturing environment.

Second, because of our scale, we can mobilize experienced teams across the organization. It is not unusual for us to deploy more than 100 technicians, engineers, and manufacturing professionals to support the launch of a new facility.As a result, we can now often complete the same ramp-up process in just a few months. More importantly, this means our clients do not have to wait for capacity to become available before advancing their programs.

When they are ready to move forward, we are often ready to support them immediately. This is how we build resilient infrastructure for the industry.Fierce Biotech: You've described the importance of capabilities, infrastructure, and global coordination. What do you think will be the key determinants of success in today’s drug development?Steve Yang: Speed and quality still matter in determining success in drug development.

What has changed is how difficult it has become to achieve both at the same time.Twenty years ago, development pathways were often more standardized and predictable than they are today. The challenge today goes beyond executing individual tasks well. It requires coordinating expertise across multiple disciplines and moving quickly throughout the development cycle.

As a result, I think one of the most important determinants of success today is the ability to execute in an integrated way.Let me give you an example. If we look at small molecules, the proportion of compounds larger than 600 Da has increased by more than 60% since 2021, while the average number of synthesis steps for long-route molecules has increased by 22%.At first glance, those may sound like chemistry challenges. But in my view, they are really integration challenges.

As molecules become larger and more sophisticated, success depends not only on new synthetic methodologies, but also on customized analytical approaches, advanced purification strategies, formulation expertise, process development, and scalable manufacturing solutions. No single discipline can solve these challenges alone. We need chemists, analytical scientists, process engineers, formulation experts, and manufacturing teams to work together from the beginning, sharing insights and anticipating challenges before they become costly delays later in development.There is another aspect that is often overlooked because it is not always the most exciting topic, but it’s important to build sophisticated analytical and purification capabilities with cutting-edge instruments and equipment.

Without the right technologies and expertise, it becomes difficult to characterize complex molecules and make confident development decisions. In many cases, the scale and quality of those platforms can determine how efficiently a molecule advances toward patients.Fierce Biotech: Throughout our conversation, you've argued that the industry's biggest challenge is no longer discovering innovation, but translating it. Looking ahead, what do you think the industry must do differently to keep pace with the science?Steve Yang: WuXi AppTec’s vision is “Every drug can be made, and every disease can be treated.” The reason we emphasize the “can be made” part is that it is often much harder than people realize.I think the industry's next challenge is not generating more innovation, but learning how to translate increasingly sophisticated innovation into medicines.

Scientific discovery continues to advance rapidly, but many of the most promising modalities also present entirely new formulation, development, and manufacturing challenges.I mentioned PROTACs earlier. Many of the next-generation small molecules face similar challenges related to oral bioavailability. As molecules become larger and more complex, formulation can become a critical determinant of whether a therapy ultimately succeeds.

Addressing these challenges increasingly requires new technologies such as spray dried dispersion and hot melt extrusion, as well as the expertise to apply them effectively.I see a similar trend in peptides and oligonucleotides. These are highly promising and increasingly programmable modalities with the potential to enable more precise and personalized therapies. At the same time, they are often far more complex to develop and manufacture than traditional small molecules.

Developers may need to conjugate them to antibodies, link them to other functional payloads, or formulate them within lipid nanoparticles. Each additional layer of sophistication introduces new technical challenges that must be solved before patients can benefit.In many ways, innovation advances through discovery, but it reaches patients through execution. That is why I believe the industry's next challenge is not only discovering what is scientifically possible, but also ensuring that every promising innovation can actually be made.

This work may not receive the same attention as a scientific breakthrough, but it is often what determines whether an innovative idea ultimately becomes a medicine. building-6.jpg The editorial staff had no role in this post's creation. Biotech