CordenPharma buys AmbioPharm to boost its global peptide API capacity

Looking to broaden its capabilities in peptide active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), contract development and manufacturing organization CordenPharma — with 11 facilities in Europe and the United States — has entered into an agreement to add capacity for U.S.-based peptide API supply and bring China-based production options into its network.

Under the deal announced on Wednesday, CordenPharma is acquiring AmbioPharm’s two peptide API manufacturing facilities in North Augusta, South Carolina and Shanghai, China, which combined employ approximately 400 people. While the financial details of the agreement between the CDMOs were not disclosed, CordenPharma said AmbioPharm’s shareholders will reinvest into the combined business.

AmbioPharm’s North Augusta site will serve as CordenPharma’s second U.S. peptide facility, adding capacity focused on the purification and lyophilization of peptide APIs and complementing existing capabilities in CordenPharma Colorado to “deliver fully U.S.-based peptide API supply options” for customers with large-scale commercial projects, according to the announcement.

In March 2026, AmbioPharm announced a significant expansion of its manufacturing facility in North Augusta, adding 68,000 square feet to support commercial-scale peptide API production. In August 2025, AmbioPharm announced it was nearing completion of a 75,000-square-foot peptide manufacturing facility in Shanghai to increase commercial-scale manufacturing capacity for peptide APIs.

CordenPharma on Wednesday said it will leverage AmbioPharm’s new peptide manufacturing facility in Shanghai to support clinical and commercial global supply with “significant upstream capacity” across Solid-Phase Peptide Synthesis (SPPS), Liquid-Phase Peptide Synthesis (LPPS), and hybrid synthesis, as well as downstream capabilities.

According to AmbioPharm, both the North Augusta and Shanghai facilities have been inspected multiple times by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as well as other global regulatory bodies with “excellent” outcomes.

Growing its global network, capabilities

CordenPharma’s AmbioPharm acquisition is meant to expand its upstream and downstream production footprint, while augmenting the CDMO’s global API development and manufacturing capabilities for complex peptide programs.

“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,” CordenPharma CEO Michael Quirmbach said in a statement. “AmbioPharm’s capabilities perfectly complement our existing peptide expertise, helping us to broaden the ways we support customers from development to commercialization.”

In March 2025, biopharma company Viking Therapeutics announced a multi-year, $150 million manufacturing agreement with CordenPharma for the API and final finished product supply for Viking’s obesity drug candidate. The deal includes dedicated manufacturing lines and an annual fill-finish capacity of 100 million autoinjectors, 100 million vial-syringes, and more than one billion oral tablets — with the option to expand capacity.  

In April 2025, Quirmbach told Pharma Manufacturing that the peptide market is “booming with a lot of demand driven by GLP-1s” and the need for high quality APIs for peptide-based medicines. As a result, he said CordenPharma planned to invest more than €1 billion over the next three years to build and expand small, medium, and large manufacturing facilities in Europe and the U.S. to meet the need for both injectable and oral peptides. 

Of that amount, CordenPharma is investing over €500 million to build a greenfield site for small to large-scale peptide development and manufacturing at Getec Park in Muttenz, Switzerland, near Basel where the CDMO’s headquarters is located.

At the same time, CordenPharma is expanding existing lines and building a new greenfield production area at its Boulder facility, with a more than $500 million investment in both mid- to large-scale peptide manufacturing. The expansion will more than double its SPPS reactor capacity by adding an additional 25,000 liters, with the goal of total reactor capacity of more than 42,000 liters by 2028.

Earlier this year, CordenPharma Colorado signed a 15-year lease for 64,000 square feet of laboratory space in Boulder, expanding the CDMO’s lab development footprint near its existing large-scale peptide manufacturing facility. The expanded peptide development capabilities will be integrated into CordenPharma’s global network across Europe and the U.S.