CPHI Milan 2024 - From the Floor

Milan and CPHI welcome you to 2024 CPHI Milan! As we celebrate the 35th edition of our flagship CPHI show, editors Vivian Xie and Lucy Chard bring you the latest from the show floor, conference sessions, and innovative solutions from all exhibitors, attendees, and speakers. 

Welcome!

The regional capital of Lombardy and the 35th edition of CPHI welcome you to Milan! The CPHI team have been hard at work to bring you a bumper edition of our flagship show – follow along with our From the Floor blog as we give you live updates from the show floor, conference sessions, and activity centres across the next 3 days. 

What can you expect from CPHI Milan 2024? Find out here! 

The Content Team have also brought together all-new Conference Tracks. They have brought together 160+ expert speakers to give you access to industry insights across 5 content tracks to choose from. To give you a preview of what these tracks cover, we sat down with some of our Track Sponsors and speakers to take an in-depth look at the importance of these topics. 

Manufacturing 5.0 
Anil Kane, PhD, MBA, Executive Director, Global Head of Technical & Scientific Affairs at Thermo Fisher Scientific, sponsors of this year’s Manufacturing 5.0 track, discusses the core tenants of Industry 5.0 and how it relates to biopharma in this Track Sponsor interview. 

Manufacturing Localisation in Africa 
Speaker Robert Matiru, Director, Programme Division at UNITAID, will be participating on the panel ‘Pharma Manufacturing in Emerging Markets – Towards Localisation in Africa’. You can read more about the opportunities and challenges for manufacturers in emerging markets with our Speaker Interview here. 

The Microbiome and Future Therapies 
Long-time CPHI friend and Managing Director of Lodaat Pharma Rajiv Khatau will be speaking on the session ‘Fireside Chat: Exploring the Microbiome’s Multifaceted Role in Future Therapies’, part of the Next-Gen Bio track. Click here to read more about innovations in future therapies and how the microbiome plays a role. 

The RTU Alliance and Pharma Packaging
Gerresheimer, SCHOTT Pharma, and Stevanato Group are proud to found the Alliance of RTU (Ready-to-Use) and sponsor the Packaging Innovation track at CPHI Milan. In this exclusive interview, they discuss recent developments in pharmaceutical packaging and the importance of packaging in the industry.

Awards

This year’s CPHI Awards have added two new categories to further recognise and cultivate a culture of inclusion of different perspectives. Read more about the Future Leader award and the Woman of the Year award here. 

Diversity and Well-Being

At CPHI, we aim to champion and highlight the importance of diversity in a global pharmaceutical industry. Healthcare, at the end of the day, is for all, not matter your background or experience. Leading up to Milan, we took the time to explore the many avenues and faces of the pharmaceutical industry with exclusive interviews and journeys through a day in the life.

Women in Pharma: C-Suite Journeys in Leading Diversity
Our September edition of Women in Pharma spoke with the panellists of this year's Diversity panel, being held Thursday, October 10 at 11:35am in Hall 6 (6A28). This session of C-Suite executives will be discussing their and their company's journeys in implementing diversity initiatives and foster a culture of inclusion and equity. Get a preview of the session with our Women in Pharma interview here.

Day 3

Thanks for joining us for another edition of CPHI! The Content Team has a great time bringing you the best in expert-led pharmaceutical content. Though we will be parting ways to different parts of the world, there's nothing like celebrating with the people you work with on a job well done!

See you in Frankfurt!

Sustainable eating habits over here at the Sustainable Futures Theatre! We have waffle cups lined with chocolate that melts into creamy deliciousness when filled with hot Italian espresso. If there is one drug worth taking, it's caffeine, caffeine, caffeine!

The conversation at the Sustainable Futures Theatre turned towards the topic of diversity in pharmaceutical organisations with a panel featuring C-Suite leaders on how they lead the implementation of diverse initiatives to accept and value the different backgrounds and experiences of all in the pharma community. Keep an eye out for the full session write-up later this month, but get a preview with our Women in Pharma interview here.

The final day of CPHI Milan is here and while the team is sad to see a week of innovation and collaboration come to an end, the sharing of valuable knowledge hasn't stopped. Over at the Sustainable Futures Theatre, Rachael Riggs of Martiz gives an opening keynote on the importance of well-being, giving an overview of the five dimensions that make up a healthy mind and body. Drop by the Sustainable Futures Theatre in Hall 6 to keep up with how we at CPHI champion Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Well-Being.

This year, CPHI is thrilled to launch the CPHI Mentorship Programme here in Milan on the third day of the show. The brainchild of our very own Shanaya Lalmahomed, Marketing Executive at Informa Markets, the Mentorship Programme aims to bring people across the industry, especially women, together to support eachother in their careers. 

The launch opened with a panel, where first Shanaya states about how she wprimarily ants to help women, that's how the idea was born, Shayana spoke to women attending CPHI India and it was highlighted there that women in pharma need to feel confident and safe enough to speak up about the challenges they face working in the industry. This thread of thought was carried through and we asked women from all our events and realised its the same issues the women were experiencing, the same things holding them back, so Shanaya thought what can we do, as a huge global platform we have the opportunity to find people that can work together and offer advice and support eachother to help guide them through their careers. 

Day 2

The Customer Insights lounge has been busy asking the CPHI community for their thoughts on both the pharmaceutical industry and CPHI events themselves. In an interesting start to the day, it seems like nutraceuticals and functional foods integrated with pharmaceuticals may be the next big trend in pharma. Learn more about this topic over at the Future of Pharma and Ingredients Theatre in Hall 22! 

Over at the Future of Pharma and Ingredients Theatre, Danita Broyles, Director - Quality Assurance - Compendial, Analytical, Microbiological, Stability (CAMS) at Harmony Biosciences, discussed the importance of assessing and accounting for nitrosamine impurities from ingredient through to the final drug product, and what companies should do to proactively protect themselves and their patients. 

Nitrosamines, organic compounds formed from a nitroso and amino group, are a potentially carcinogenic group of compounds that can present throughout the drug manufacturing process. The impact to patients is obvious, but the impact to companies could mean product recalls and distrust in a brand, affecting business throughout. In order to assess the risk of nitrosamines to a company, Broyles notes it is important to have a thorough and, most importantly, a documented risk assessment, evaluating the risk of formation for nitrosamines in the product. Health authorities are also placing expectations on companies to understand the entirety of their supply chain, and good relationships with suppliers can mean the difference between nitrosamine contamination and a safe drug product. 

Lucy settled in to the Next-Gen Bio theatre, with several interesting presentations on important considerations for the supply chain. 

Federica Fraschetti, MSD, gives a talk on 'Navigating Tech Transfer in Biologics Manufacturing' – she jokes that we at CPHI like to challenge her to explain these technical aspects in 20 minutes – but we know she can handle it! 

She gives some top line advantages, speed to market, governance, looking at structure within the team and sponsors. She also details the advantages for standardising packaging and equipment, citing better integrity data generated for the products once vials, containers, mixing studies, and more, are standardised. 

Standardisation of equipment can help with onboarding and training of new staff, making this process much more efficient and cost effective for a company.

She usefully gives a run down of the whole process using a case study of Quality by Design in a Tech Transfer. She reminds the audience that it is still important to commercialise your product, you need approvals, through all the regular channels too.  

While the rest of the Content Team get ready for another full day of conference sessions, Lucy and Viv are getting ready for the first ever Pharma Trends Outlook Roundtable, hosted in support of the annual Pharma Trends Outlook Report published in January 2025. While the discussion was behind closed doors, you can be sure that many productive conversations were had, from the impact of the BIOSECURE Act to the role of AI in the pharma supply chain to what the future of sustainability looks like for the pharmaceutical industry.

Day 1

Awards time! We're excited to be celebrating the very best in the pharma industry with all the nominees and winners tonight. If you have pre-registered, head to Hall 24 for a night of well-deserved food, drinks, music, and networking. This year is extra special with CPHI Celebration in honour of CPHI's 35th birthday - editors Lucy and Viv are quite smug in the fact that they are both younger than the show itself, but don't tell their boss.

The panel discussion on Pharma Manufacturing in Emerging Markets - Towards Localisation in Africa? is now on at the Manufacturing 5.0 Theatre in Hall 5. Pushpa Vijayaraghavan moderates a panel of exciting panellists as they discuss ideas around regional and continental markets, covering fundable projects across African nations. 

Important insights are brought up regarding access to capital as well as talent development in Africa. Malick Daniel outlines that the investment landscape of Africa is "definitely changing. Before COVID, we saw traditional investment models in projects. COVID changed this model, and we are starting to partner with companies and develop projects alongside them, sharing the risk early. This has been an important aspect of the evolution of providing capital in nascent environments. We have to start from scratch, and that begins with building up the infrastructure and regulatory environment."

Partnerships is also a buzzword during the panel, for all it will be important to work together to build the basics, such as building talent, access to capital, and create enablers to attract companies to set-up and run successful businesses within the African continental hub, states Manuel Martin.

Skipping over to Hall 5.0, Dr Paul Reddel from QBiotics and Frederico Peterlongo from Lachman Consultants give a presentation on 'From the Rainforest to the Clinic. Turning a High-Potency Rare Natural Product Into an Anticancer API', sponsored by Indena. Covering the procurement of raw materials and the pathway that brings them to patients in the form of life saving medicines. 

Molecules discovered in the rainforest that have to be synthesised to make them viable for commercial use in the future. Reddel drives home that when working with raw material supply you have to understand the wild genetic resource, capture it, and then breed to capitalise on it. Cultivating the natural product is important to produce raw materials. You can also take this further with selective breeding with particular plants. Indena work specially to get the chemistry right, and has the capacity and flexibility to make highly potent compounds and support the natural ecosystem. 

Viv is running between Halls to catch keynotes and panels on various topics related to pharmaceutical manufacturing. 

Kicking off with a keynote address from Elisabeth Stampa, President of Medicines for Europe, gives a broad overview of the Future of Pharma Manufacturing, a hefty subject for anyone. She focuses on key pillars for the future of manufacturing, the top three being the use of AI in Pharma, Regulatory Flexibility, and Sustainability and Green Chemistry. Hot topics such as the BIOSECURE Act and the rise of GLP-1 drugs are also front and centre, signalling the importance on preparing for the future in response to events outside the industry's control. 

Lucy heads over to her favourite theatre, the Sustainable Futures theatre. We've seen the sustainability content at CPHI become more and more prominent, and the popularity and importance of the track is made instantly clear, with a packed theatre right from the off this morning.

Arne Kloke chairs the sessions today, representing SCHOTT Pharma and the Alliance to Zero. 

Deloitte give the keynote speech following on from Kloke opening the theatre, the experts discuss how CEO's need to think about sustainable choices, not as a silou but in every aspect of the organisation. David states there's a lot to be positive about, with 85% of leaders increasing their investment in sustainability. The role of the CFO for example is growing and changing, having a better understanding across the business, so that they can keep up with regulations and KPIs longer term in terms of investment, focusing on what the long term gain can be for a business.

Understanding the Problem of Decarbonisation in Drug Delivery - hearing from Team Consulting, Lonza Capsules & Health Ingredients, and Eco-inject Ltd. 

John Palmer-Felgate from Eco-inject goes through the lifecycle of injectable products, and the knock-on effect of carbon emissions from disposal of such products. He suggests reduces aspects of the product development chain, to in turn reduce the emissions from each stage, manufacturing, use, through to disposal, and ultimately making the device more efficient at the same time. 

All three contributors then took part in a panel discussion. 

There was a theme, which we have heard before, of it being important to take the 'easy wins' in sustainability, the smaller changes that can be implemented immediately, to keep moving forward and so as not to fall behind, such as reuseable elements, looking at recycling, the panellists stated that it is neccessary to continue to look at the challenges and to do this with a sense of urgency. 

Duncan Flack, Global Sustainability Lead for Honeywell asked: "If we’re going to shift the needle across the industry, one company making one change isn’t going to make enough of a difference, where do you see large scale change being made? And how are they doing that?"
 
Alistair answered challengeing the premise of the question, pointing out that one company could have a large monopoly of a market share, i.e. one company making one change could in fact make a big difference to one area. But he stated that we need to look at the infrastructure in place, whether this makes these changes applicable on a wider scale.  

The opening ceremony officially starts the show, with words from VP Adam Anderson and the Vice Mayor of Milan, "The focus on human health and wellbeing has never been so important, Milan shares this challenge... it can be the perfect backdrop for this event, showcasing ideas and innovations and encouraging collaboration." 

Stickers for all the pharma-cuties out there!

And we're off! The doors are now open for attendees, exhibitors, organisers, and sponsors alike. If you have time in the day, come check us out at the CPHI Online hub located in the Customer Insights Lounge near Halls 5 and 6.

Day 0

Keep an eye out tomorrow for some hidden branding in unexpected places!

The halls are once again abuzz with activity, this time in the historic Fiera Milano! We can't wait to welcome everyone tomorrow for the big opening.

Editors Viv and Lucy are super excited to be here!