Synthetic peptides and peptides that incorporate a significant synthetic portion have become some of the most important pharmaceuticals on the market. We wanted to understand how much drug substance must be produced annually to support sales.
Because the information for US sales is available from financial filings and other reliable sources, we made an estimate of the drug substance needed to support those sales.
It should surprise no one that tirzepatide and semaglutide drug substance requirements dominate our estimates by an order of magnitude. Requirements to serve the global market are more difficult to estimate in the same manner used for the US market. A rule-of-thumb is that the material needed for the US market is about half the amount needed to support world-wide sales. To reach these levels, manufacturers of every key material in the peptide synthesis supply chain and the peptide synthesizers needed to scale-up and innovate to create the required capacity. The result is that now there is a robust and widely distributed capability of all the elements of peptide synthesis. New products will benefit.
