Alberto Santagostino: The ‘friendly’ CEO at the helm of AGC BiologicsAlberto Santagostino: The ‘friendly’ CEO at the helm of AGC Biologics

In November last year, contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) AGC Biologics appointed Alberto Santagostino as CEO and president. Santagostino has worn many different hats throughout his illustrious career in biotech and pharma, but within his first two weeks, he donned his marketing cap, rebranding the company as “Your Friendly CDMO Expert.”

The tagline, liberally sprinkled across the signage and literature at AGC Biologics’ invitation-only CMO Summit in Seattle, Washington last month, could easily be dismissed as just another advertorial buzzword. But something about the word “friendly” stood out among the typical hackneyed “global,” “end-to-end,” and “patient-centric” jargon touted by other CDMOs.

Sitting down with Santagostino, he explained that the term “friendly” is not an aspiration for AGC Biologics, but an existing characteristic that the CDMO had not expressed in an effective manner.

When he came to AGC Biologics, which is owned by Japanese conglomerate AGC Inc, Santagostino was impressed by the demeanor of those within the company, especially when compared with other CDMOs. “It just talked to me how actually humble, palatable, easygoing, and uncontroversial the company is.”

Santagostino could be speaking about himself. Across the two-day conference, his modest and even-tempered personality shone through, whether in his keynote address or while talking with attendees, glass of beer in hand.

With a degree in Industrial Biotechnology from the University of Milano-Bicocca and a Master of Business Administration from Politecnico di Milano, Santagostino is walking the tightrope between science and industry.

“I enrolled in an engineering school,” he told BioProcess Insider. Although he enjoyed the curriculum, a career in life sciences called to him. “I found that equally intellectually interesting, but it gave me a better sense of meaning to my own personal nature.”

Santagostino’s ‘aha’ moment came when he recognized much of the “wonderful science” was not being translated into the real world. He noticed there was “an enormous discrepancy between the knowledge and the value that that knowledge was creating. The fact that I then shifted myself into operating at the interface between science and business was a little bit my intuition around where I could create most value impact, and since then, that has been my philosophy.”

Although he joined AGC after serving six years as head of Cell and Gene Technology at Lonza, his philosophy propagated at management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. where he worked for 12 years, rising to the position of partner within its Pharmaceutical & Medical Product practice.

“I was one of the first biotech-focused hires at McKinsey, at least in Europe, and after one year in which I was doing a bit of everything, I started to do my first project in life science. The client I was working with appreciated the consulting ability mix with the technical understanding. That was maybe a part that was not fully valued 20 years ago.”

Translating ‘friendliness’ into a CDMO

Santagostino’s ability to balance science and business blends seamlessly with AGC’s culture of amiability, especially in how the CDMO works with clients. The sector is often treated as a seller’s market, he said, motivating companies to extract as much money as they can from customers. But upon arriving at AGC, Santagostino noticed a cooperative dynamic, coupled with “prices that are slightly below the average.” That made it “clear that the attitude was based on a more equitable way of doing business, which I liked a lot.”

With a network spanning the US, Europe, and Japan, the firm is a global CDMO. And of course, it needs to profit. Santagostino stressed that friendliness and profitability are compatible. He said the push “to make an equitable margin” means being “a little creative so I can be more indulgent in my pricing versus what the other players do, but without sacrificing quality.

“Quality is where it should be,” Santagostino added. “The pricing is just a consequence of a more equitable value sharing proposition with a customer, and maybe a little bit less pressure on the top profitability, while still maintaining healthy profit margins for the organization.”

No IP, no geo-political problems

Alongside the ease of doing business and a commitment to “no obnoxious pricing,” a third pillar that checks AGC Biologics’ “friendly” box is not having “inappropriate intellectual property (IP).” Without naming specific companies, he told us some CDMOs playing in the biosimilar space “believe they have an opportunity toward proprietary.” Such elements do not fit his vision for AGC Biologics.

In fact, Santagostino’s team have decided to make their own CHEF1 expression platform more accessible. The technology, inherited from CMC Biologics, includes three proprietary components – the CHEF1 plasmid; serum-free CHO DG44 cells; and chemically defined CD-CIM1 media – that work together in AGC Biologics’ standard cell line development platform to rapidly generate high-quality production clones. While details as to how the proprietary hurdles surrounding the platform will be removed are being finalized, Santagostino said AGC’s plans feed the general “desire to make technology accessible.”

Meanwhile, the global nature of the CDMO space makes it highly susceptible to macro-economic factors, including political interference and protectionist measures. And while he acknowledged it is difficult to predict the future, Santagostino said AGC Biologics’ global network plays up to the CDMO’s “friendly” persona by being as risk-free as possible.

AGC’s Seattle microbial and mammalian site – added and expanded upon through the acquisition of CMC Biologics in 2017 – has undergone a transformation over the past few years. According to Jose Gonzalez, general manager, the implementation of safety, quality, reliability, innovation, and people imperatives has helped reduce the average number of deviations per batch at the site by 60%.

AGC Biologics operates another US facility in Boulder, Colorado, offering clients large-scale (20,000 L) mammalian options. The company’s nearby Longmont facility plant is currently idle amid a turbulent cell and gene market.

In Europe, the Copenhagen, Denmark campus – another CMC legacy site – offers microbial and mammalian services, while the Milan, Italy, site (added through the acquisition of Molmed in 2020) offers cell therapy and viral vector manufacturing services. A Heidelberg, Germany facility, meanwhile, offers microbial, mRNA, and plasmid DNA (pDNA) capabilities.

And in Japan, alongside a Chiba site offering clients mammalian, microbial, and pDNA, a multipurpose site under construction in Yokohama at a cost of ¥ 50 billion ($325 million) will begin offering cell therapy development services later this year with full process development services beginning in 2026. GMP mammalian manufacturing (using 5,000 L and 2,000 L single-use bioreactors) along with mRNA capabilities are estimated to commence in 2027.

Said Santagostino, “We have symmetric presence in each of the three geographies so that we can follow the customer and their desire. I'm not force them in one specific geographical hotspot. I'm not forcing them under a specific legislation hot spot. It's almost a pick-and-choose as to what you feel your strategy should be.”

The value of biopharma

We asked how working in an industry sometimes rife with scandals and mistrust, often in its ambition to chase profit over patient, sits within Santagostino’s ethos.

“There are criminals everywhere. There are poorly intended people everywhere. There are opportunistic people everywhere. But the majority of the people that do business [in this industry] I want to believe, out of my personal experience, come to the table with the intention that they create more value than the cost to do what they do.”

He added, “Science delivers on the aspiration of creating a better life. There is enough value creation to make everybody wealthy and better off, both from an ethical and an economic standpoint.”