As the biopharma industry continues to evolve, sustainability has emerged as a key driver of progress.

Ryan Walker, Sustainability Program Leader at Cytiva, highlights the company’s holistic approach to advancing sustainability through innovation, collaboration, and eco-conscious design. From the groundbreaking Design for Sustainability (DfS) program to transformative technologies like additive manufacturing, Cytiva is at the forefront of reducing emissions and optimizing efficiency across the value chain. Discover how Cytiva is paving the way for a greener, more sustainable future in biomanufacturing as we head into 2025 and beyond.

Moving the biopharma industry forward in a more sustainable way

Cytiva has a long and storied history of working with our customers to accelerate the development and manufacture of advanced therapeutics. We collaborate to provide the right tools, technologies, solutions, and services that enable our customers to bring high-quality, life-changing therapeutics to the market faster. This is especially relevant with the advent of cell and gene therapies, mRNA vaccines, and the 2023 approval of Casgevy, the first CRISPR/Cas9 therapeutic approved by several regulatory bodies for the treatment of sickle cell disease,. There is also increased industry focus on antibody drug conjugates (ADCs), therapies that can deliver toxic payloads to cancerous tumors with minimal damage to healthy cells. Diseases that were once thought incurable now have possible treatment options – offering patients hope for a better life. 

Cytiva strives to meet the changing needs of the biopharma market. In 2023, we integrated the life sciences business of Pall into Cytiva, giving our customers access to our  combined expertise, tools, and services. Throughout 2024,  Cytiva launched products and collaborations to help our customers deliver the life-changing therapeutics patients need. As the biopharma industry evolves, Cytiva will continue innovating and developing the tools and solutions our customers need to meet patient demand.

Progress requires more than bringing companies together and launching new products through creativity and collaboration. At Cytiva, sustainability is critical to our purpose, our brand, and our collaborations with our customers and suppliers.

Leading with sustainability 

We are committed to reducing our CO2 emissions by 90% and achieving  net zero CO2 emissions by 2050. We are doing this by building a culture of sustainability across our entire business, accelerating decarbonization across the value chain (customers, suppliers), and by leading with eco-design and product transparency. 

There are significant opportunities for growth in sustainability. According to Cytiva’s Global Biopharma Sustainability Review, which surveyed 800 pharma and biopharma leaders across 18 countries, only 39% of respondents believe they’re effectively incorporating sustainability throughout the product life cycle. However, 63% of respondents see sustainability as imperative to business growth and innovation. Responding to customer feedback, Cytiva is delivering products and technologies that accelerate drug development in a more sustainable way. 

Eco-design – making products more sustainable from the beginning

Cytiva’s Design for Sustainability (DfS) program is our framework to ensure that our new product introduction process puts sustainability at the core. Our teams are always looking to find ways to reduce, reuse, or recycle at every stage of the product life cycle.  

The DfS program includes a checklist that measures each core team's success in creating more sustainable products. It also helps identify and prioritize areas for enhancing sustainability efforts. 

Cytiva’s SuporTM Prime sterilizing filter is an example of an eco-designed product. The Supor Prime filters deliver twice the throughput of comparable filters, yet they are only half the size. This smaller filter size for batch processing means significantly less plastic waste, lower greenhouse gas emissions, and minimal process fluid loss. Supor Prime exemplifies the synergy between high performance and eco-conscious design.

Product design matters, but new technologies are essential for more significant advancements. Driving product sustainability requires both eco-design and technology—they form the essential combination for success.

Our research shows that most pharma companies believe enabling technologies like automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and data analytics are moderately to extremely important to achieving their sustainability goals and moving the industry toward a more digital future. 

Using additive manufacturing to transform biomanufacturing 

Additive manufacturing is a technology with the potential to transform biomanufacturing while also helping to deliver on sustainability goals. Also known as 3D printing, additive manufacturing creates objects by adding material in layers and offers significant benefits for biopharma companies, such as optimizing cleanroom space by reducing equipment size and eliminating unnecessary materials. 

One key advantage of additive manufacturing is the reduction in instrument weight and size, thanks to the precision in using only the necessary material. This results in improved portability and ease of use, while also significantly reducing hold-up volume and the number of welds and clamps in a system. Our team at Cytiva is using additive manufacturing to drive innovation and create products sustainably.

Greater sustainability across the value chain

While we are proud of the work we do internally to prioritize sustainability, we know that collaborating with our vendors and suppliers is critical to helping us achieve our goals. Although there are many stakeholders across a product’s lifecycle, we must continue finding creative ways to reduce emissions across the value chain.

Reducing Scope 3 emissions, the emissions produced outside of an organization’s own business activities , requires creativity, transparency, and trust between partners. More than 70% of emissions produced by the life sciences and healthcare sectors come from supply chains. Sixty-nine percent of respondents to Cytiva’s Global Biopharma Sustainability Review believe weak collaboration across the value chain is a barrier to sustainability and only 17% of respondents believe they can accurately measure Scope 3 emissions.

Below are a few examples of how we have worked to reduce Scope 3 emissions at Cytiva:

• Responsible sourcing program creates a chain of suppliers that participate in EcoVadis assessments and are motivated by reducing their own environmental and societal impacts;
• Deploying ‘Green Spend’ which aligns resources and spend with suppliers who have similar levels of sustainability ambitions as Cytiva
• Eliminating polystyrene from the Cytiva supply chain
• Shipping via ocean instead of by air transportation when possible for customers

Our research also shows that biopharma companies are working to embed sustainability into their business partnerships. This approach is of particular importance for those  companies we identified as being part of a “leader group”, paving the way for biopharma sustainability. These companies are setting shared sustainability goals, pooling talent and skills, and collaborating with their suppliers to innovate new solutions to a much greater extent than late adopters.

Looking ahead to 2025

In 2024, Cytiva enjoyed  successful product launches as well as achieving  our sustainability targets. However, we know there is always more we can do to move the biomanufacturing industry forward. We invest in our relationships with our customers and suppliers and value customer feedback. With a shared vision of a healthier world, we embrace working with our customers and supplier to  continue developing  innovative ways to transform the biomanufacturing industry in 2025 and beyond.

At BioPharma BoardRoom, we are inspired by Cytiva’s unwavering commitment to sustainability and innovation. As the biopharma industry navigates the complexities of 2025, Cytiva’s leadership in eco-design, collaborative partnerships, and transformative technologies sets a high standard for others to follow. Their holistic approach not only addresses environmental challenges but also aligns with the industry’s mission to improve lives globally. Cytiva’s journey underscores the power of combining purpose with progress, paving the way for a sustainable future in biomanufacturing.

( editor@biopharmaboardroom.com )