As biotech companies face increasingly tight development schedules, scale-up challenges, and, these days, unpredictable policy changes, one way to stand out as a CDMO partner is to choose and master your area of expertise.
This was one of Jeremie Trochu’s goals when he joined Ardena as CEO in 2024, aiming to manage the CDMO into a new phase of growth by expanding its international footprint, honing its strengths and ensuring that recent acquisitions go smoothly.
In the ensuing years, Ardena has worked to enhance various CDMO capabilities without overloading clients with potential service offerings, Trochu said in a recent virtual interview with Fierce in conjunction with DCAT Week 2026.
“We want to think holistically within a particular discipline,” he explained.
CDMO’s current business revolves around advanced oral solids services, from formulation development to clinical manufacturing and small-scale commercial manufacturing, as well as capabilities related to nanomedicine and advanced conjugates, Trocheux said.
Ardena integrates these components into an overall focus on precision medicine, working with clients on treatments specifically tailored to small patient populations, Trochu continued.
The CEO speculated that more biotech companies are likely to seek out one-stop-shop CDMOs like Ardena, given accelerated development and regulatory timelines in the U.S. and elsewhere.
When a company developing a drug for a rare or undertreated disease receives FDA fast-track or orphan drug designation, it increases the pressure to “shorten the time from successful Phase 2 results to commercial launch,” Trotheux explained.
New technologies like artificial intelligence could also speed up the pace of development cycles, he added.
“If you’re not integrated as a business and specialized in the capabilities you provide to your clients, you won’t be able to achieve the agility and speed that biotech customers need,” Trotsch said of the expectations placed on CDMOs as a result.
Analyzing some of Ardena’s recent specialization moves, Trocz focused on nanomedicine, noting that CDMOs have been working on it “even before it cooled down,” alluding to the lipid nanoparticles that gained attention as a delivery vehicle for mRNA for COVID-19 vaccines at the beginning of the decade.
By Troczew’s tally, Ardena has worked on more than 100 nanomedicine programs throughout its history, and the CEO says 30 of them are currently active in the clinic. To support its nanomedicine strategy, Ardena established a facility dedicated to this technology in the Netherlands several years ago, he added.
Meanwhile, Ardena has not hesitated to downsize in areas where it believes its resources can be better utilized.
Case in point: Earlier this year, Ardena agreed to sell its manufacturing facility in Södertälje, Sweden, to local pharmaceutical company Nanologica for nearly $1 million. As Trochu said, Ardena was “not in a position on the ground to truly invest in its next chapter of growth.”
Regarding the company’s dedicated facility in the Netherlands, Trochu said Ardena designed the factory to address a “gap” in the nanomedicine developer market, noting that the facility continues to receive strong international interest from customers despite the tense geopolitical environment.
“If you have a unique set of capabilities, and you have a track record (to go with) those capabilities, people in the United States, people in Asia, and definitely people in Europe will find you,” he said.
Citing recent geopolitical turmoil that is directly impacting markets and supply chains, Trocheu noted that while the biopharmaceutical industry is certainly under pressure, “we are largely immune to those dynamics.”
At the end of the day, Trotsch said, biotech customers are still looking for “best-in-class” partners to help solve their problems, and that desire tends to outweigh the challenges posed by government policy shifts.
heading west
Belgium’s Ardena has been a “predominantly EU-based CDMO” for much of its history, Trochu said. However, the company expanded into the U.S. in 2024 with plans to purchase Catalent’s oral solid dosage development and small-scale manufacturing facility in Somerset, New Jersey, which had been put up for sale as part of Novo Holdings’ acquisition of the U.S. CDMO.
Ardena completed the acquisition in February 2025.
Trotsch suggested that the timing turned out to be fortuitous, as a massive industry movement to establish or expand U.S. production infrastructure began soon after, largely in response to the threat of U.S. import tariffs under the Trump administration.
“Given the last 15 to 18 months, being able to supply products to customers on both sides of the pond is even more important,” he explained.
Trotsch acknowledged that “the timing worked out well” for Catalent’s facility purchase.
“A year later, acquiring a world-class GMP facility in the U.S. probably would have been a more competitive process, especially given the increasing trend toward regionalization,” he said.
With the purchase of this site, Ardena has added approximately 200 employees and is now equipped for clinical and small-scale commercial manufacturing of oral medications. But Trotsch said the company’s strategy from the beginning was to eventually bring other functions online at its U.S. locations.
The CEO added that some of these expansion efforts are already underway, with CDMO’s first bioanalytical lab set to open soon in Somerset. Meanwhile, Ardena is looking to dedicate some of the site’s larger GMP space to nanomedicine in the future, he said.
