Press Room

Press Release / Oct 19, 2011

Hovione and Bend Research Enter Into Collaboration To Advance Clients’ Best Medicines

HOVIONE, a worldwide pharmaceutical manufacturing firm and BEND, OR – Bend Research Inc. (www.bendresearch.com), a leading independent drug-formulation development company, announced today that they have entered into a nonexclusive, cooperative relationship.

The collaboration will give Bend Research clients access to Hovione’s commercial-scale pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities worldwide and give Hovione clients access to Bend Research’s oral drug-delivery, formulation, and engineering expertise.

“Hovione has world-class commercial-scale spray-drying capabilities—both staff and facilities. We’re excited about this collaboration because Hovione will expand the range of manufacturing options available to our clients,” said Bend Research Chief Executive Officer Rod Ray.

In addition to manufacturing, the collaboration builds upon both companies’ expertise in many types of specialized formulations, including engineered particles for inhaled delivery.

Dave Hoffman, VP Exclusives and Particle Design, said, “Hovione is very pleased to work collaboratively with Bend, a company with such extensive expertise in early and mid-stage development. Leveraging on their capabilities, this collaboration will allow both companies to provide a comprehensive and integrated solution from development to commercial scale. ”

The collaboration will allow seamless technology transfer between the two companies, leveraging Bend Research’s clinical-trial-scale manufacturing facilities and scale-up and transfer expertise with Hovione’s wide range of capabilities, which includes cGMP manufacturing facilities in the U.S, Ireland, Portugal, and China.

In addition, the agreement gives Hovione clients access to Bend Research’s expertise in oral drug delivery, formulation, and process engineering, including its proprietary drug-delivery technologies.

“This effort is a key part in our commitment to getting our clients’ best new medicines to market as quickly and efficiently as possible, and with the highest quality,” Ray said.

About Hovione

Hovione is an international company with over 50 years’ experience in Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient development and compliant manufacture. With four FDA inspected sites in the U.S., China, Ireland, and Portugal, the company focuses on the most demanding customers, in the most regulated markets. The company also offers integrated API, particle design and formulation development and manufacturing. In the inhalation area, Hovione is the only independent company offering such a broad range of services. Hovione employs 1,100 people worldwide.

About Bend Research Inc.

For more than 35 years, Bend Research has worked with clients to create value by advancing new medicines that improve human health and to solve their most difficult scientific and technical problems. This success is based on the company’s ability to develop, advance, and commercialize pharmaceutical technologies. The firm’s innovative drug-delivery solutions grow from a solid base of scientific and engineering fundamental understanding.

Bend Research provides formulation and dosage-form support, assists in process development and optimization, manufactures clinical-trial quantities of drug candidates in its cGMP facilities, and advances promising drug candidates from conception through commercialization. Bend Research is a leader in novel drug formulations, including those based on solubilization (e.g., spray-dried dispersions), hot-melt extrusion, inhalation, controlled-release, and biotherapeutic technologies. Bend Research has more than 240 employees based in four state-of-the-art facilities in Bend, Ore., USA.

For more information about Bend Research

Contact Phoenix Ivers by email at Phoenix.Ivers@BendResearch.com,
by phone at 541-382-4100 and
visit www.bendresearch.com

For more information about Hovione

Isabel Pina
Corporate Communications
ipina@hovione.com
+351 21 982 9362

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A mechanical engineering graduate, this Frenchman is the CEO of the Portuguese pharmaceutical contract manufacturer Hovione. Still owned by the founding family, the company was awarded the 2025 ‘Léonardo de Vinci’ Prize, which recognizes the innovative and successful succession planning of family businesses. With an international career behind him, Jean-Luc Herbeaux is almost more fluent in English than in his native language. At 58, this Frenchman with iceberg-blue eyes is the CEO of Hovione. Founded in the late 1950s, this Portuguese group, with 100% family ownership, has just received the ‘Léonardo de Vinci’ Prize, which highlights entrepreneurial successes tinged with family legacy. While this mid-sized company with a turnover of €500 million maintains a low profile, its pharmaceutical contract manufacturing business is just as obscure to the general public. "Yet, the market for contract manufacturers, or 'contract development manufacturing organizations,' is worth $200 billion", emphasizes the CEO, who has been working in this microcosm for two decades. 500 patents Aware of the stakes, he does not deny "the pharma industry's dependence on Indian and Chinese capabilities". "The fact remains that the trend is toward the regionalization of supply chains, with European manufacturers producing for the Old Continent, American manufacturers for their own market, and so on", he says. And to highlight the foresight of Diane and Ivan Villax, the founding couple, "who thought globally from the very beginning". As a result, the group, with its 500 patents, has factories in China, the United States, and Ireland, without neglecting its home territory. This is evident by the site currently under construction on the banks of the Tagus River, following a €200 million investment. "The heavy engineering and compliance aspects are being finalized, "he explains, emphasizing that this highly regulated sector "is under a microscope". He knows this all too well, as Hovione claims to be involved in 5 to 10% of the drugs approved each year by the FDA, the American drug regulatory agency. Professor from Houston to Japan “In this small world, having a good image is important: this is the case with Jean-Luc, passionate about his work, but who knows how to demystify things”, observes Elie Vannier, former chairman of the board of Hovione. He adds that having an international profile is a strength “in this ecosystem where talent and clients are international”. For his part, Jean-Luc retains from his numerous flights “a taste for films of all genres and from all countries”. The son of an administrative employee in secondary schools and an auto insurance expert, the youngest of three children moved around according to his parents' job transfers. He was born in Meaux, grew up in Chartres, and attended the University of Technology of Compiègne, “which already offered programs abroad”. Thus, he left a mechanical engineering internship at a Dior perfume factory to join the University of Houston in Texas, "carrying a 20 kg backpack". Despite his then-limited command of English, he earned a doctorate, became a professor, and met an American woman who would become his wife and the mother of their two children. Next came the University of Kanazawa in Japan. Alas! Disappointed by the academic world, "where you have to fight to get resources", he succumbed to the allure of industry and joined the American chemical company Rohm and Haas, which had fallen under the control of the German company Evonik. 80 million patients He spent twenty years there, in Germany and Singapore, before "accepting the offers from headhunters". He then accepted Hovione's offer, who appointed him Chief Operating Officer in 2020, then CEO two years later, making him the first CEO not from the founding family. The family remains the sole shareholder, which earned the company the ‘Léonardo de Vinci’ Prize, created by the Association Les Hénokiens and the Clos Lucé. Having settled near Lisbon, he substituted walking for combat sports, "having been burned by the injuries of some friends". He also mentioned that Hovione, whose clients include 19 of the world's 20 largest pharmaceutical companies, helps treat more than 80 million patients. (Translated version) Read the original and full article in French on LesEchos.fr

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