IDT Biologika looks to double its sales by 2028 in post-acquisition growth phase

2025 was the start of a transformation for Germany’s IDT Biologika, following the acquisition of the contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) by SK bioscience. The South Korea-headquartered vaccine and biotechnology company took a controlling stake in the CDMO in October 2024 and began a post-merger integration process designed — in part — to maximize the utilization rate of IDT Biologika’s manufacturing facilities.

With more than 100 years in vaccine manufacturing and 30-plus years in commercial fill-finish, IDT Biologika has a long history of working with global pharmaceutical and biotech companies. However, as part of the acquisition, SK bioscience’s goal was to create new drug substance and drug product capacities for major projects with multinational biopharma companies and to invest in high-growth businesses such as pre-filled syringes, recombinant vaccines, and cell and gene therapy.

“IDT is well known in the marketplace as a CDMO mainly for vaccines, cell and gene therapy, and also the production of drug product,” said Chief Commercial Officer Federico Pollano. At the same time, he described 2025 as a “relaunch” for the company.

While specialized in viral vaccines, viral vectors for cell and gene therapies, and oncolytic viruses and other biologics, IDT Biologika’s priorities in 2026 are to sharpen the CDMO’s development capabilities, strengthen its drug substance expertise, and focus on the regions that drive sustainable and profitable growth, according to Pollano.

“We are dealing not only with drug product but also developing and producing drug substance for both clinical trial materials and for commercial,” he said, noting that the company is the only producer of an oncolytic virus that is registered. “We are very strong in vaccines for drug substance and drug product.”

IDT Biologika offers a full range of end-to-end contract services from process development to clinical and commercial GMP manufacture of live virus drug substance at biosafety level 2 (BSL-2), aseptic liquid filling, lyophilization, and secondary packaging. The CDMO also provides sterile liquid and lyophilized fill-finish of vaccine products in vials and pre-filled syringes at clinical and commercial scale.

Under the recent acquisition and integration, SK bioscience announced it was transferring technology and production to IDT Biologika for main products such as flu, shingles, chickenpox, and typhoid vaccines. Last month, SK bioscience joined a Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations-backed effort to improve Ebola vaccine manufacturing with an important role for the CDMO.  

Working with IDT Biologika, SK bioscience will develop an updated drug substance manufacturing process and the associated drug product, applying its vaccine production infrastructure and capabilities to support long-term supply for low- and middle-income countries.

Expansion of manufacturing capabilities

Since SK bioscience acquired a 60% stake in IDT Biologika in late 2024, the two companies have integrated their development, manufacturing, and supply-chain operations across vaccines and biopharmaceuticals — combining SK’s recombinant protein and cell-culture technologies with IDT’s manufacturing infrastructure.

IDT Biologika’s German sites are in Dessau-Rosslau and Magdeburg, offering end-to-end manufacturing from process development and tech transfer to clinical and commercial scale — with 200L to 2,000L platforms, in-house analytics, and fill-finish services.

The Dessau-Rosslau facility provides contract manufacturing services meeting GMP and BSL-2 requirements, while Magdeburg offers additional process development laboratory capacity that supports Dessau-Rosslau in cell culture technologies, fermentation, virus production, and process analytics.

For fill-finish of late stage and commercial products up to BSL-2, the CDMO has expanded its capacities for 2R, 6R, and 10R vials — up to 25R — with a dedicated filling line. With the capability to fill up to 80 to 100 million 2R vials annually and batch sizes of up to 500,000 2R vials, IDT Biologika claims it is one of the world’s fastest for processing large and small molecules.

“This high-speed line is dedicated for large-scale commercial production,” Pollano said. “The range of products we can fill-and-finish is from viral vectors up to proteins and also biosimilars.”

The company has also invested in a new high-performance automated visual inspection line, which complements the CDMO’s manual and semi-automated visual inspection capacities, according to Pollano.

“We are investing a lot into automated visual inspection, which not only helps to have enough ‘eyes’ on the product but also to be more flexible and faster,” he added.