CPHI Milan 2026: The Demand for Commercial Spray Drying

As part of PharmTech’s CPHI Milan 2026 coverage, Jason Bertola, executive director of Commercial Development for the Advanced Synthesis Platform at Lonza in North America, sat down to discuss what is driving the demand for spray drying and where scale-up efforts may go wrong. He also provided advice for how companies can build a resilient path to commercial manufacturing.

Bertola says the biggest driver of demand is the growing complexity of molecules entering development. More small molecules are poorly soluble, which makes it hard to reach the exposure levels needed for efficacy, he explains. Spray drying also has a track record, with products already commercialized, and he expects the market to keep growing quickly.

The biggest misconception, according to Bertola, is that spray drying scales linearly. Successful scale-up means maintaining critical process parameters and the desired particle and product attributes, he explains. According to Bertola, formulation-focused companies sometimes underestimate how much depends on drying kinetics, atomization, solvent management, particle collection, and secondary drying.

A resilient strategy starts with commercial readiness in mind, Bertola says. That means choosing technologies, formulations, and operating parameters that transfer across scales while keeping product quality and performance consistent. Building internal capability makes sense only with a large, predictable pipeline that justifies the capital and the dedicated team. For many companies, partnering with a contract development and manufacturing organization offers faster access to expertise and commercial-scale assets. What matters, he says, is access to the know-how needed to scale successfully, not who owns the equipment.

Bertola also advocates an integrated approach that ties formulation, process development, analytics, modeling, scale-up, and commercial manufacturing into one strategy from day one. Programs have historically moved sequentially. Predictive tools and advanced modeling now let teams identify key risks earlier, concentrate experiments on the most promising formulations, and make better decisions with less material.

Click on the above video to watch the interview. For more coverage of CPHI Milan, visit PharmTech.com’s conference page.