We are pleased to announce that Rob Williams, PSCI Chair and Senior Director of Sustainable Procurement at AstraZeneca, will be speaking at CDMO Live 2025 in Rotterdam on Thursday 8 May. Rob will be joined by Martin Chilcott, Founder of Manufacture 2030, for two key sessions that will dive into the evolving role of sustainability in the pharma sector and its impact on contract manufacturing.

CDMO Live 2025 brings together leaders in the contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) space to discuss the latest trends, challenges, and innovations shaping the future of biopharma manufacturing.

Key sessions featuring Rob Williams:

• The State of Sustainability in Pharma (10:00 - 10:20)
  Rob Williams and Martin Chilcott will explore how the pharmaceutical industry is responding to the climate crisis, highlighting how PSCI members and the wider sector are addressing environmental impacts across complex, energy-intensive value chains and making progress towards ambitious decarbonization goals.

• Sustainability in Action: Turning ESG into Reality (13:30 - 15:00)
  This session will explore how the pharmaceutical industry can translate sustainability and ESG goals into actionable strategies. Robert Williams will host an exclusive Outsourcing Excellence Roundtable focused on turning ESG commitments into reality, using the PSCI Materiality Index as a framework for implementation.

Don’t miss the opportunity to hear Rob Williams’ insights alongside other thought leaders in the industry. Register now for CDMO Live 2025 and be part of the conversation shaping the future of biopharma manufacturing.

Register your attendance via CDMOLive.com

The PSCI presents its report on the use of Horseshoe Crab Blood for Endotoxin Testing in the Pharmaceutical Industry. The report provides insights into the context and complexities behind its use, pathways for better practices in the industry, an insight into the PSCI member companies’ use and next steps both the PSCI and others working in this ecosystem can take going forward.

The PSCI have been engaged on the topic of Horseshoe Crab Blood since 2023. Following the development of its position paper and convening through the working group. The PSCI has been discussing and exploring better pathways for better practices in the pharmaceutical industry and this report encouraging companies to minimize its use and seek alternatives for endotoxin testing in their supply chains.

Pharmaceutical companies use horseshoe crab blood to test medicines and vaccines for safety. The blood is a bright blue colour and has a special quality that makes it incredibly important to human health – it coagulates when exposed to bacterial endotoxins, which can cause sickness or even death in humans.

The impact of the amebocyte collection process on the crabs, and what should be done about it, is contested. The main challenges and complexities include the endangered Asian horseshoe crab, protection of the Atlantic horseshoe crab population, ecological concern over interdependencies and contested data of mortality rate from amebocyte collection.

While the demand for endotoxin testing continues to increase globally with no indication of consumption decline, the availability of synthetic alternatives is also growing in availability and popularity driven in part by ethical and environmental concerns about pharmaceutical supply chains. Challenges vary regionally in terms of regulation, environmental impact, cost and accessibility.

A survey amongst PSCI members was conducted intending to take the pulse of member companies which carry out or commission endotoxin tests, establishing their corporate policies and plans for TAL and LAL usage, as well as their current practices. Going forward, it is imperative to realize that the pharmaceutical industry must come together to collaborate on opportunities in this area.

This project was funded through the projects workstream. Following report publication, the working group aims to publish further capability building resources to support good practices amongst PSCI members. While members are progressing on developing positions on the reduction or elimination of TAL and LAL in their supply chains, only few are be planning for the resilience of its supply.

The PSCI would like to extend a big thank you to Jay Bolden and Shah Shaid, members of the Horseshoe Crab Blood Working Group, the PSCI member companies that responded to the survey and all other contributors for the development of this year’s report.

Sustainable sourcing runs across the pillars of the PSCI Principles and enables companies to build responsible supply chains. In that spirit, PSCI members have been working over the last year to produce an approach that sets the foundations of sustainable sourcing and is consistent with the PSCI Maturity Models. This work focused on two raw materials of importance to the pharmaceutical supply chain: lactose and palm oil. Each with its own challenges, these two raw materials were selected to test the approach developed, and will be the first of more to come.

The PSCI sustainable sourcing supplier pathways offer a best practice approach for members and suppliers, with guidance and tools to aid the implementation. By providing this common best practice approach, the PSCI aims to improve the industry’s collective progress towards a more sustainable supply chain and address key issues for both commodities:

• For lactose - Carbon emissions, water use and pollution, animal welfare, labour rights, biodiversity impacts from feed growing, and traceability and governance
• For palm oil - Land use change, Biodiversity loss, and Human & labor rights

The documents were produced by a third party under the direction of a PSCI expert Topic Team and were based on a series of interviews with key stakeholders, as well as a review of the literature available and sustainability reporting frameworks covering the raw materials selected.