- CordenPharma has agreed to acquire U.S.-headquartered peptide CDMO AmbioPharm, adding manufacturing sites in North Augusta, South Carolina, and Shanghai, China to its global network.
- The deal expands CordenPharma’s Peptides Platform across three continents, adding SPPS, LPPS, and hybrid synthesis capabilities alongside its proprietary TAPS technology.
CordenPharma has entered into an agreement to acquire AmbioPharm, a peptide API CDMO with facilities in North Augusta, South Carolina, and Shanghai, China, in a move that extends the Basel-headquartered CDMO’s global Peptides Platform into Asia for the first time.
The acquisition adds approximately 400 employees and brings complementary upstream and downstream peptide manufacturing capabilities to CordenPharma’s existing 11-site network in Europe and North America. Owned by pan-European private equity firm Astorg since 2022, CordenPharma generated €960 million in sales and employed more than 3,000 people in its 2025 financial year.
The North Augusta site will serve as CordenPharma’s second U.S. peptide facility, complementing existing operations in Colorado to enable fully domestic U.S.-based supply for large-scale commercial peptide programs. The site will focus on purification and lyophilization of peptide APIs. The Shanghai campus, described as state-of-the-art, will support clinical and commercial global peptide supply across SPPS, LPPS, and hybrid synthesis.
Together, the combined synthesis technology portfolio — SPPS, LPPS, hybrid, fragment-based approaches, and CordenPharma’s proprietary Tag-Assisted Peptide Synthesis (TAPS) — is intended to give customers broader options for manufacturing complex, long-chain, and high-purity peptide APIs. Both AmbioPharm facilities manufacture new chemical entities under cGMP and have undergone multiple FDA inspections.
“As peptide programs become more complex and advanced, customers value CDMO partners who can offer both upstream scientific route selection and process robustness with downstream manufacturing scale and built-in geographic flexibility.”
Dr. Michael Quirmbach, President & CEO, CordenPharma Group
“Becoming part of CordenPharma marks an exciting new chapter for AmbioPharm. Together, we will be able to offer customers broader technical capabilities, increased global capacity, and a highly reliable Peptides Platform to support the development and commercialization of peptide-based medicines, delivered through a fully-integrated global facility network. Importantly, we remain focused on the patients who rely on these medicines.”
Brian Gregg, CEO, AmbioPharm
As part of the transaction, AmbioPharm’s existing shareholders will reinvest into the combined business. Financial terms were not disclosed. The transaction remains subject to customary closing conditions.
