September 2022: From the Editor

Just coming off our big anniversary issue, we editors are still in a taking-stock mindset. That normally goes hand-in-hand with planning for the next publication year — which we can’t believe we’re doing already — but it feels more acute this time. And our 20th year has coincided with some pretty major current events, as the world begins to emerge from a pandemic amid a great deal of associated economic and sociopolitical turmoil. The effects of it all on the biopharmaceutical industry have yet to settle into something that can be qualified, much less quantified. It was a lot easier to look back at the past 20 years in our special issue than even to try imagining what the future will bring.

But unless you’re a very special particle in a very esoteric quantum-physics experiment, the stream of time moves in only one direction and carries us all along with it. Change is our inevitable companion on the journey, and on this page in the next few issues, we’ll be introducing in detail some new people, processes, and projects. In the meantime, we at BPI can’t help looking around at what we’ve built so far with a collective sense of amazement. From early conversations among the four founders — now down to two of us — it expanded into issues and supplements, a multimedia website, international conferences, eBooks and webinar series, a training academy, awards programs, custom publishing services, and more. The founding four people were joined by more and more — until now there are too many involved to list on our masthead (see the bottom of page 2), which these days represents just the tip of an iceberg.

At the heart of it all remains BPI the publication, which despite all predictions that “print is dead,” you may well be holding in your hands as you read these words. At the core of every issue are the authors who entrust us to help them communicate their ideas, challenges, and successes with the industry at large. They are leaders and doers in the biopharmaceutical industry, consultants and academics who support it, engineers and technology developers who provide it with the tools it needs to operate. And most of them are also our readers. Our goal always has been to bring you all together.

This publication exists to facilitate the kinds of interactions that are vital to the industry’s moving forward. And for that, we depend on your participation as both readers and contributors. Send your ideas, suggestions, and proposals to the editor emails listed in our masthead — now, especially, we are eager to receive them as we move forward into 2023 and beyond. But there’s still time to participate in our special projects for the remainder of this year.

Our October featured report will highlight technologies and strategies for gene biomanufacturing and delivery. Our November–December featured report focuses on viral safety technologies and strategies, both upstream and downstream. Upcoming eBook themes include chromatography, cryopreservation, mRNA’s postpandemic future, and laboratory technologies for molecular testing, environmental monitoring, and quality assurance/control. We are likely to begin next year by turning our attention to formulation, fill, and finish. And an advanced-therapies focus is always just around the corner. Your contributions are key to all these discussions.

Meanwhile, we continue to collect your thoughts on the best places to work in biopharmaceutical development. We’re grateful to those hundreds of participants who have weighed in and we look forward to sharing the eye-opening results with you later this fall. Through these extraordinary times, some companies are leading not only in scientific innovation, but also by investing in the health and growth of their employees.