- Dark Horse Consulting has launched the Initiative for Certification of Manufacturing Capabilities (ICMC) to increase transparency in the Cell and Gene Therapy (CGT) CDMO market.
- ICMC offers third-party evaluations of CDMO capabilities to assist drug developers in selecting credible manufacturing partners.
Dark Horse Consulting Group (DHC) has introduced the Initiative for Certification of Manufacturing Capabilities (ICMC), aiming to address growing concerns in the cell and gene therapy (CGT) CDMO market. The program is designed to offer unbiased evaluations of CDMO manufacturing capabilities to bring greater transparency and trust to the sector.
As the CGT CDMO landscape expands, the market is seeing an influx of new providers, many of whom claim to offer compliant and scalable manufacturing services without independent verification. DHC’s ICMC initiative seeks to close this gap by providing an objective certification process that evaluates providers across nine key capability systems. The resulting Certified Member Directory will be publicly accessible, enabling drug developers to identify credible manufacturing partners more easily.
According to Anthony Davies, Founder and CEO of DHC, “With ICMC, we are setting a new benchmark for transparency and trust in the CDMO marketplace. Sponsors often struggle to find credible, unbiased information when choosing a CDMO. ICMC is designed to help by providing a list of vendors with verified capabilities as a starting point for sponsors’ CDMO selection process.”
The ICMC program allows CDMOs to opt into third-party assessments, with the goal of ensuring that their capabilities are fairly and comprehensively evaluated. The certification aims to build trust between developers and service providers and to highlight the expertise and capacity of certified CDMOs within the industry.
Overview of outsourcing trends 
