We have often heard the terms CMO, CDMO and CRO used within organizations looking to outsource a particular task, by suppliers highlighting their service capabilities, and most recently from B2B online platforms that claim to streamline the outsourcing process by linking buyers and sellers together. But what exactly is the difference between these apparently similar terms?
To help us, lets first look at what they are and what they have in common. Contract Manufacturing Organization (CMO), Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) and Contract Research Organization (CRO) are all service providers. As the name suggests they provide services to other companies, usually within the Pharmaceutical and Agrochemical Industry, on a contract basis. Inevitably however, the services of the three types of contract organizations are often found to overlap.
The Research R component in CRO, places most of these organizations in the space of implementation and management of clinical trials or complex medical testing procedures. Contract services are therefore associated with the Drug Discovery (pre-clinical) through Development (clinical phases I-III) stages of the pharmaceutical drug lifecycle.
The D in CDMO brings a dimension of development capacity to the organization where efforts are focused in the Development stage of the drug lifecycle. Here the contract organization employs their services to develop a manufacturing process or analytical methods that will be used during the Delivery (commercial) stage. By offering a “one stop” development and manufacturing service, the organization can capture customers early in their product development timelines and can retain those customers throughout clinical development and onto the commercial market if their products are successful. At times however, CDMOs can get involved in the discovery of new APIs or chemical entities for which they can also be found operating in the Drug Discovery stage.
Finally, the CMO focuses on the Delivery stage of the pharmaceutical drug lifecycle where the goal is to ensure continuity of supply during commercial manufacture. Of course, as part of drug lifecycle management, manufacturing processes are continuously verified and optimized for improvements which brings back a level of development to the service however, the focus remains mostly on the manufacture of the required product volumes.