CordenPharma, a global contract development and manufacturing organization specializing in complex drug modalities, has officially entered into an agreement to acquire AmbioPharm. The AmbioPharm Deal strengthens the company’s manufacturing presence in the United States while adding newly integrated production capabilities in Shanghai, China. The move allows CordenPharma to comprehensively support the growing global demand for complex drug modalities across clinical phases and full-scale commercialization.
Headquartered in North Augusta, South Carolina, AmbioPharm operates dedicated facilities in both the U.S. and Shanghai. Through AmbioPharm Deal, CordenPharma significantly broadens its technical scope for increasingly complex clinical and commercial programs. The combined platform will offer customers wider options across upstream and downstream peptide manufacturing. Supported processes include Solid-Phase Peptide Synthesis (SPPS), Liquid-Phase Peptide Synthesis (LPPS), hybrid synthesis approaches, and CordenPharma’s proprietary Tag-Assisted Peptide Synthesis (TAPS) technology.
The integration of AmbioPharm’s 400 employees and dual facilities will expand CordenPharma’s existing footprint beyond its current 11 sites in North America and Europe. The North Augusta location will serve as the company’s second U.S. facility, providing critical purification and lyophilization capacity for peptide APIs. This directly complements current operations in Colorado, enabling fully U.S.-based supply chains for large-scale commercial projects. Meanwhile, the Shanghai facility introduces substantial upstream manufacturing capabilities, ensuring reliable clinical and commercial supply globally.
Since its acquisition by Astorg in 2022, CordenPharma has consistently invested in infrastructure to support the production of long-chain, high-purity peptide APIs. The financial terms of the transaction remain undisclosed, and the deal is subject to customary closing conditions. AmbioPharm shareholders are expected to reinvest into the combined entity as part of the agreement.
“This acquisition significantly bolsters CordenPharma’s Peptides Platform with complementary capabilities and advances our strategic objective to serve as a leading peptide manufacturing partner,” stated Dr. Michael Quirmbach, President and CEO of CordenPharma Group. “As peptide programs become more complex and advanced, customers value CDMO partners who can offer both upstream scientific route selection and process robustness with downstream manufacturing scale and built-in geographic flexibility. AmbioPharm’s capabilities perfectly complement our existing peptide expertise, helping us to broaden the ways we support customers from development to commercialization.”
Paul Perreault, Chairman of the Board at CordenPharma, emphasized that the move secures long-term industry positioning. “This acquisition marks an important step in CordenPharma’s growth journey, enhancing the company’s strategic positioning and supporting significant long-term growth opportunities in peptides,” Perreault noted.
Reflecting on the merger, Ling Yang, Partner and Head of Healthcare at Carlyle Asia, an investor in AmbioPharm, remarked, “We remain confident in the strong growth potential of the global peptide CDMO market and look forward to continuing to support the combined business as it seeks to achieve the next level of success.” This ongoing collaboration aims to further secure global supply chains for advanced therapeutics.
