At your ‘service’

DDNews is rolling out a new section in the magazine (titled Contract Services) to cover news of the contract research and contract manufacturing sides of the pharma, biotech and diagnostics markets
| 2 min read
Register for free to listen to this article
Listen with Speechify
0:00
2:00
The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed a little change on our cover: a new entry for something called “Contract Services.” I’m sure none of you have any idea what that covers (he said in a highly over-exaggerated manner while rolling his eyes).
 
Of course you know what those are. But, for the benefit of casual visitors who might be leafing through this issue in your reception area or in your office while waiting for you to get off a call, we’ll mostly be talking in that section about news of contract research organizations (CROs) and contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs—or sometimes CDMO for contract development and manufacturing organization)—basically, the firms to whom pharma and biotech companies outsource work that is too complex, burdensome, costly or time-consuming for them to handle themselves.
 
We did have an Outsourcing department at one time and then dropped it, but now the market for CRO/CMO work has changed.
 
CROs and CMOs are a pretty critical part of the discovery and development of therapeutics and diagnostics. They often have the specialized systems, connections, scale, etc. to do efficiently what pharmas and biotechs often cannot—or in some cases, the ability to synergistically boost what those companies are already doing to make their work even more efficient and effective.
 
So, we felt it was high time to give them their own space in the magazine.
 
This does mean some changes going forward. We haven’t eliminated any existing news sections and have no plans to, so there might be a couple fewer news stories on other topic areas each issue. But, overall, we will tend to have slightly more news stories than we did before.
 
There is another small change taking place as well. If your eagle eyes were really sharp, you might have also noticed the lack of an entry on the cover’s table of contents for the monthly Q&As that we started running around the time I took the DDNews helm in January 2014. There is indeed a Q&A in this issue, but going forward, it won’t be a regular feature of the physical magazine. However, for the foreseeable future, we expect to include them as a special “online only” feature of each issue. Don’t worry; we’ll tell you in each physical issue where to find it and what company/topic it will address.
 
We welcome your input about the new section as we move forward and, as always, we invite your commentary and input about the publication and our website in general. You can find me at bouley@ddn-news.com. Thanks for your continued readership, and I hope to be serving up the news you need (and didn’t know that you didn’t know about) for a long time to come.

About the Author

Related Topics

Published In

Loading Next Article...
Loading Next Article...
Subscribe to Newsletter

Subscribe to our eNewsletters

Stay connected with all of the latest from Drug Discovery News.

Subscribe

Sponsored

Image Alt Text	A laboratorian wearing blue gloves places a PCR sample into a real-time PCR thermocycler, the model shown is blue and white with a large digital screen.
From primer design to sample preparation, explore comprehensive strategies to optimize PCR throughput and reproducibility.
Tackling mycoplasma contamination in biotherapeutic production
DNA-based testing is emerging as a sensitive way to uncover and control a hidden threat in biomanufacturing.
Surface rendering of two interacting proteins (green and peach) bound together by a small molecule ligand at their interface, illustrating a protein-ligand binding event.
Learn how molecular dynamics, AI-aided design, and structural insights combine to reshape how therapeutic proteins are created, validated, and optimized.
Drug Discovery News June 2025 Issue
Latest IssueVolume 21 • Issue 2 • June 2025

June 2025

June 2025 Issue

Explore this issue