The Future of Freeze-Drying for Life Sciences in 2026

“Drug development pipelines have expanded significantly over the past decade, with the number of active programs nearly doubling. Much of this growth comes from new modalities and therapeutic classes, each presenting unique formulation challenges.

Although oral delivery is preferred by patients and developers, many emerging drugs still rely on injectable formats because oral administration remains difficult to achieve.

Drug developers have well-established strategies to improve bioavailability, but the surge of new modalities is moving faster than their awareness of which approaches can truly help. Emerging and repurposed technologies, including lyophilization, can create new routes to oral delivery, and potentially also revive promising candidates that could not achieve druggability.”

“Demand for freeze-drying is likely to grow as data continues to demonstrate its stabilizing benefits for structurally sensitive molecules such as peptides and proteins. These modalities often degrade in solution, making lyophilization a critical tool for preserving bioactivity.

The industry’s move toward patient-preferred, non-injectable routes of administration will reinforce this trend. As companies seek viable approaches to oral delivery for complex molecules, the role of bulk lyophilization is expected to expand.”

“On the process side, our goal is to build and incorporate new models and tools into our process development workflow. What this means is that we will be able to better predict lyophilization cycle times and conditions both from first principles and from the extensive experience we have. Our aim is to accurately forecast performance not only at small scale, where products may have little or no history, but also during scale-up to full production batches.

On the formulation side, we are specifically working to create lyopastilles that can meet any target product profile. This ranges from rapidly-dissolving ODTs to modified-release mucoadhesive formulations that can accommodate any dose and any type of molecule desired to be delivered orally. Currently, we’re building our tool chest to address all types of projects, both from a material and expertise perspective.

Ultimately, our goal is to integrate formulation and process development into a unified approach. For example, the ability to measure and model the impact of both freezing rates and formulation will enable us to target specific dissolution rates for many compounds. This level of control will allow us to engineer Lyopastilles that can meet the needs of any client looking to create a lyophilized dosage form.”