Tony Acciarito, president of APMEA at Thermo Fisher Scientific, addresses the audience during the opening of the company’s bioprocess design center in Hyderabad, India.
What are the recent developments in the life sciences and drug manufacturing industry that you’re seeing in the Asian market?
Asia’s life sciences ecosystem is undergoing a structural shift. We are seeing strong growth in cell and gene therapy, antibody-drug conjugates, nucleic acid therapies, and GLP-1 programs. Traditional biologics are still growing, and biosimilars are expanding fast. Biosimilars matter because they make biologic drugs more affordable, while also pushing companies to build real manufacturing scale and technical depth.
At the same time, AI and automation are changing how work gets done. Drug discovery is moving faster. Manufacturing is more digital and data driven. Governments are investing heavily in local research and production. And companies are spreading their supply chains across more countries to reduce risk.
What’s driving the change, and what type of opportunities does that offer for companies in the space?
Three things: speed, complexity, and resilience.
Speed, because patients and markets expect faster development. Complexity, because advanced therapies need tightly connected, highly controlled manufacturing systems. Resilience, because supply disruptions are no longer theoretical. Companies want backup options and geographic diversity.
Customers don’t want to engage with multiple vendors. They want strategic partners who can connect the pieces, reduce risk, and help them move faster.
The opportunity is clear. Companies like Thermo Fisher that can support the full journey, from discovery to process development to clinical scale-up and commercial manufacturing will stand out.
That’s where our one Thermo Fisher value proposition and scale helps. We bring together bioprocessing tools, GMP-ready raw materials, analytics, automation, digital systems, and regulatory support. Instead of handing customers separate parts, we help them build an integrated system that works.
The lobby of the bioprocess design center in Hyderabad, India.
Proximity to the customer matters. Early process design decisions have long-term implications for cost, scalability, and regulatory success. By being closer to our customers, we can engage earlier, co-develop solutions, and reduce downstream risk. Advanced therapies need hands-on expertise. Biosimilars and antibody-drug conjugates require closed systems, specialized reagents, and strong analytics. Regional centers allow us to localize global platforms to meet specific customer and regulatory requirements. Finally, regulations vary across countries. Having local regulatory knowledge on the ground helps customers move with more confidence.
How do you expect these centers to impact development timelines for therapies in the region?
We expect the centers to meaningfully accelerate timelines, particularly in early process optimization, tech transfer, and scale-up. When customers can access local expertise, conduct hands-on evaluations, and align early on GMP-compliant reagents and closed systems, they reduce the need for rework later. That translates into fewer delays during IND filings, validation, and commercialization. Ultimately, faster development means therapies reach patients sooner, and that is the outcome that matters most.
Customer Experience Centers across the region give scientists hands-on access to technology and training.
More broadly in the region, Thermo Fisher is well-positioned to support China’s expanding role in the industry and help China-originated innovation become globally credible, investment-ready assets. China is emerging as a significant source of innovative molecules, with a rapidly growing pipeline that has increasingly become a focus for out-licensing activity, reaching a record $136 billion in 2025.
This momentum reflects the country’s advancing discovery and translational capabilities and is contributing to a more globally diversified innovation landscape. In this context, Thermo Fisher integrates capabilities across the full scientific continuum — from discovery and clinical development to manufacturing and delivery — enabling customers to accelerate innovation and bring new therapies to patients worldwide.
In India, where we’ve opened a bioprocess design center in Hyderabad, we’ve supported startup innovators through programs like the BioVerse challenge with DPIIT. Across the region, our Customer Experience Centers give scientists hands-on access to technology and training. When governments, universities, startups, and industry work together, the whole ecosystem gets stronger.
Together, these collaborations with governments, academic institutions, and biopharma partners help ensure that innovation capability grows in parallel with manufacturing capacity — strengthening the overall ecosystem across Asia.
What are some of the potential challenges that could impact Thermo Fisher’s operations in the region? What approach is the company taking to address those potential challenges?
Operating in a dynamic and rapidly evolving region brings both opportunity and complexity. We see challenges around supply chain resilience, regulatory variability across markets, infrastructure maturity, and the ongoing need for highly skilled technical talent. Additionally, geopolitical shifts and evolving trade frameworks can introduce uncertainty into global life sciences operations.
Our approach is proactive and long-term. We invest ahead of demand in infrastructure, talent development, and strong local partnerships. We work closely with regulators and policymakers to ensure alignment and transparency, while leveraging our global scale to mitigate supply chain risk. Importantly, our regions model allows us to leverage our global innovation with local precision to accelerate impact at scale. That balance of local agility and global strength is what allows us to navigate complexity while continuing to deliver for our customers without disruption. The balance is simple: global strength, local impact.
In what way is the company innovating, either with products or services, to better support its customers in the region through the bioprocessing design centers?
Our bioprocessing design centers are a powerful example of how we bring innovation closer to our customers. Rather than simply supplying products, we are embedding ourselves in the design and development journey.
These centers enable rapid prototyping, process optimization, and collaborative development tailored to regional manufacturing environments. We are integrating digital tools, advanced analytics, and single-use technologies to streamline scale-up and reduce time to market. Customers can simulate, test, and refine processes in partnership with our experts before commercial deployment.
How does this regional expansion align with Thermo Fisher’s global strategy to support biopharmaceutical innovation and manufacturing?
Our global strategy is centred on enabling our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner, and safer. Biopharma innovation is increasingly global. Talent, research, and manufacturing are no longer concentrated in a few established hubs.
By investing in this region, we are positioning ourselves alongside the next wave of scientific advancement. We are ensuring that emerging biopharma companies and established global players alike have access to the same high-quality tools, services, and expertise wherever they operate.
How do you expect the rapid growth of biopharma markets in the region will reshape global development pipelines over the next decade?
We are witnessing a significant shift in where innovation originates. The rapid growth of biopharma in the region will lead to more globally sourced clinical candidates, increased cross-border collaboration, and earlier integration of global regulatory strategies.
Over the next decade, I expect development pipelines to become more geographically diversified, with clinical trials, process development, and manufacturing occurring across multiple regions simultaneously. This will demand greater harmonization, digital integration, and supply chain coordination.
For companies like Thermo Fisher, it reinforces the importance of being globally present but locally engaged. The future pipeline will be faster, more collaborative, and more distributed — and we are building our capabilities accordingly.