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An urgency to provide innovative solutions for patients is what motivates Astellas’ Chief Manufacturing Officer, Rao V. Mantri.

Responsible for the manufacturing and supply of more than 50 products across 10 global production sites, Astellas’ Product Development and Manufacturing organization plays a critical role to bring VALUE to patients faster. Joining the company in early 2025, Rao’s 25-year career across the pharmaceutical value chain from drug discovery to commercialization has shaped his focus.

Defining success as accelerating product development and efficient delivery of reliable supply of high-quality products globally, Rao is excited to lead his teams towards this. As he illustrates; passion, innovation and urgency are just some of the key factors that will help Astellas achieve its goals. Meet Rao.

Inspired for patients

“What is the end point that you want to achieve and how do you actually build towards that?” he describes.

With the end goal of reliable supply of patient-centred products and the understanding of how products are used in real-world in mind, Astellas designs our products and manufacturing processes in the development stage. This requires the drug candidates to have the right attributes at the research stage. It then requires designing products and processes with comprehensive needs of patients in mind. With this approach, we can enhance our potential to improve the patient experience, leading to treatment compliance and sometimes improved safety, efficacy and access.

Providing life altering hope to patients and families is a personal motivator for Rao as well. He is often reminded of his uncle, an inspiration for Rao’s engineering career, who lost his life to muscle-invasive bladder cancer a few years ago. His uncle had travelled to the United States from India for healthcare during his illness, providing Rao firsthand insight into the patient & caregiver experience. 

It drove the importance of accelerating the delivery of innovative drugs for Rao. Anybody who knows him, he says, knows that urgency is a major focus for him. 

“Many of us know someone who has had cancer or lost someone to cancer,” he says.

“It makes it very real for all of us on why we need to bring a sense of urgency. We need to humanize the work we do. I think that’s important.”

Delivering Astellas’ mission

Early in his tenure at Astellas, Rao is inspired and impressed by the collaborative culture and commitment of his teams. He is excited about the opportunity to help innovate through technology and deliver for patients. Designing products and processes and providing reliable supply with quality can lead to enhanced safety and efficacy. Some examples of this include new prefilled syringes which can reduce drug administration burden or changing intravenous administration to subcutaneous, which could help manage safety and administration frequency.

Throughout our organization, Astellas embeds the philosophy of MONOzukuri, derived from the Japanese word for craftmanship, emphasizing the partnership between teams to help differentiate us in the business ecosystem.

Along with improving operational efficiencies and optimizing cost of goods, our Product Development and Manufacturing organization aims to accelerate our pipeline through innovation, which could provide Astellas with a competitive edge. With a critical role to deliver for patients in a speedy manner, Rao’s teams are driven by integrity and urgency.

There’s an immense pride in realizing the design, development, manufacture and supply of products that are received by patients, families and healthcare professionals, he says.

Future focused opportunities

Astellas is dedicated to sustainability in all aspects of our work, and Rao is inspired by his teams’ commitment to this in our development, manufacturing and supply practices. This includes evaluating shipments, environmental-friendly blister packaging, and waste measurement methods. 

“It’s a collective measure of teams and individuals to drive innovations to improve sustainability,” he describes.

Product Development and Manufacturing plays a critical role in Astellas’ sustainability goals, and teams embed this philosophy into their day-to-day work, including voluntary efforts. Rao believes there are a lot of opportunities to integrate more sustainable processes over time.

Serving a global population, Astellas also faces many external pressures, including pricing, geopolitical factors and environmental issues. It forces the need to maintain a reliable supply in quality and address cost-efficiency measures, and Rao says, teams need to be ready to address these challenges.

“There is no question in my mind that we must be more effective and efficient at what we do. That is a given because external pressures will continue to happen.”

Technology advancements like machine learning, artificial intelligence and robotics are significantly advancing and Rao envisions laboratories and manufacturing sites will soon be integrating those at a faster pace. These innovative technologies can only help companies like Astellas to help shorten cycle times, improve global transfers and provide access to a broader patient population, he says.

“We need to work with a sense of urgency to achieve our vision,” Rao explains.

Pharmaceutical manufacturing is a great industry to impact health and realize the importance of that impact across the globe. There’s no better time than now to be part of this industry, Rao describes. It takes resilience but it’s a great place to see innovation happen, he says. 

Rao believes that science does not evolve because of big ideas, but the big ideas have always been there, and it is the application of technology that advances innovative science for patients.

The best, he says, is yet to come.