Building the future global blood supply with Cerus
Building the future global blood supply with Cerus
Erik Bosman, Vice President of Global Supply Chain at Cerus, discusses the evolution of the company’s global supply chain, and the strategies needed to innovate in the highly regulated medical industry.
Cerus Corporation (Cerus) has spent the past 30+ years safeguarding the world’s blood supply by developing vital technologies to pathogen reduce blood components.
he company’s INTERCEPT Blood System remains the only pathogen reduction system for platelets and plasma with both the CE mark and FDA approval, while development of its red blood cell system is in late-stage clinical trials.
Joining us from Cerus to discuss the process of building a global supply chain in such a high-stakes industry is Erik Bosman, Vice President of Global Supply Chain. To begin, Erik explains how his role has evolved alongside the company over the years.
“I’ve been with Cerus for over 11 years, and I have been fortunate to be part of our drive to grow patient access
to safe transfusions,” says Erik. “Cerus was founded in the early 1990s, during the tragedy of the HIV epidemic, when so many people around the world unknowingly received contaminated transfusions. Cerus has always been focused on preventing this from happening again. I am proud that during my tenure at Cerus, we have exceeded sales of 19 million kits sold to produce transfusible doses of INTERCEPT-treated platelets and plasma units. Before we obtained FDA approval for the INTERCEPT System, I worked in a Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) focused role taking care of all operational and finance matters. However, once we started having commercial traction in the US, it became clear that we
needed a global approach from a supply chain perspective – both upstream and downstream.
“This is when I got the opportunity to build a global supply chain team,” continues Erik. “Half our team is based in Europe, and the other half is in the US. Our supply chain is end-to-end –from starting with taking care of our manufacturing partners for the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) for the INTERCEPT System, to certain key materials and components as well as the products we eventually
commercialise, the disposable sets and the hardware. We take care of all of this, as well as the warehousing, logistics and customer side of the business.
“Customer and technical service are crucial pieces of the global supply chain organisation. I really appreciate being part of this, because it allows us to operate a truly customer-centric supply chain. At Cerus, a key tenet for us is that supply chain starts with understanding the customer, and
“We want to be the standard of care for transfused blood components globally”
Erik Bosman, Vice President of Global Supply Chain at Cerus
I’m glad this is something my team facilitates each and every day.
“The patient is our ultimate concern, whom we reach through our delivery of our products to blood banks and hospitals that process blood themselves. In most countries, it’s a dedicated blood banking organisation which acquires our technology to treat the blood products they collect and dispense. The INTERCEPT System is used to inactivate many contaminants that may exist in these products, such as bacteria, viruses, and parasites,
as well as donor white blood cells. For many patients, transfusion of contaminated blood can be lifethreatening, so the ability to reduce this risk is critical.”
For Erik, this work is absolutely crucial for the wellbeing of the global blood supply.
“We want to be the standard of care for transfused blood components globally,” emphasises Erik. “Our mission is to enable our customers to do everything in their power to deliver
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“Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center in Texas manufactures the INTERCEPT Fibrinogen Complex product using our supplied components”
safe and effective blood products to patients. In short, our vision is that blood should be available when needed and safe for transfusion. It’s a very specific focus, and that’s what we do and why we come to work every day.”
With this focus in mind, Cerus has played a critical role in preventing the spread of dangerous blood-borne diseases through blood transfusions.
“Let’s compare our technology with testing, as an example,” says Erik. “Testing is by definition a reactive intervention, because you test only what you specifically choose to test, and you can only test for pathogens that have that testing capability available. This became a real problem in 2016, when the Zika virus started spreading.
“Developing a test for a new pathogen typically takes three to six months. In the time it takes to finalise, you wouldn’t know if your blood supply is compromised if you’re dealing with a blood-borne pathogen like Zika. This is where our technology is instrumental. It targets the nucleic acids of
pathogens, which means that a broad spectrum of known and unknown pathogens are inactivated by our technology. This is where we’re really able to make an important difference.
“Some of these blood products have a very short shelf life,” says Erik. “Platelets, in that respect, are the most critical component. Because platelets are stored at room temperature and have a risk of bacterial growth, they typically have a four- to seven- day shelf life, which includes approximately one day of processing, which leaves the blood bank facing rapid turnarounds.
“In addition, there are other factors to consider like donor matching and different blood types, so the supply chain for blood banks is incredibly complex. If blood establishments decide to adopt our technology, they rely on Cerus’ ability to supply them at all times. This is a very serious obligation on our side.
“One of our production partners, Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center in Texas manufactures the INTERCEPT Fibrinogen Complex product using
our supplied components,” elaborates Erik. “This is a cryoprecipitated plasma product with high concentrations of fibrinogen and other important clotting factors, currently FDAapproved and available in the US. Fibrinogen is a critical coagulation factor that is required for blood clotting but also quickly lost in patients experiencing massive haemorrhage (heavy bleeding), such as in trauma, surgery and obstetric patients.
“Typically, trauma centres and hospitals may keep conventional cryoprecipitate frozen until needed for a specific patient because, once thawed, its shelf life is only four to six hours, due in part to infectious risk at room temperature. The problem here is that this delay can prevent ready access upon arrival of the
bleeding patient, for whom time is really of the essence. In contrast, pathogen reduction of INTERCEPT Fibrinogen Complex has facilitated a five-day shelf life in thawed condition, so clinicians can have it ready to transfuse as soon as the patient arrives without risking wastage of the conventional product.
“The intimate relationship we have built with our partner Gulf Coast is critical – this is a product in high demand, so our open and communicative relationship is key to ensuring vital blood components can be made and commercialised.
“In light of this, the way we approach our work on a day-to-day basis is based on a few simple concepts: we always strive to have a 100% fill rate,
where we always need to be able to supply our customers, and we have to be fully focused on business continuity.
“In the medical industry, we are heavily regulated – which means new developments can move relatively slowly. So we need to focus not only on today, but also on the future, to ensure we have the right products, the right capacity and the right manufacturing locations available to continue that supply in the long run.
“We do that by creating a real intimacy with our customers, where we hold regular meetings with them to truly understand what’s going on with their operations, and give them transparency so they know exactly
what’s going on with us. Customers sometimes have to get used to that, because it’s a different concept or level of information sharing which they might not be familiar with. We have found that ultimately, our customers see the value of it, and become very open with us to forge extremely strong partnerships.
“By doing so, we can anticipate many things. What I want to establish with these processes is the ability to signal a risk in our ability to supply well in advance – three, four months ahead of time. We never confront our customers with the problems we have today, we approach them with the potential problems that might be coming in the future. By doing so, we can mitigate
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“Porex makes a critical component that’s an integral part of our technology”
risk and collaborate on the solution – making sure that a theoretical problem never becomes a true problem.
“On the flip side, I also want our manufacturing partners to deeply understand what’s going on in Cerus so that they can serve us best. My team and I often do product demonstrations with our manufacturing partners. We speak about what our technology does, how it saves lives and how the people we work with are also contributing to that life-saving work. This has been quite effective for us, because it’s about more than a particular product they produce – it’s about how they’re making a meaningful contribution to safeguarding the blood supply.
“We typically find that, through this kind of engagement, someone tells us that a family member recently had surgery, for example, and needed to receive several units of plasma and platelets. This is the moment where we can make a connection between how they contribute to our product and how they have therefore contributed to that supply of safe
blood for their family. It really brings the product to life and reminds everyone involved of the importance of the work we’re doing.”
A notable partner for Erik – and for Cerus as a whole – in these lifesaving endeavours is Porex, a plastics manufacturer specialising in innovative porous materials solutions.
“Porex makes a critical component that’s an integral part of our technology,” remarks Erik. “They’ve been a manufacturing partner for us since the beginning, and the component they make is a compound absorption device. This device absorbs residual API after the blood product has been treated, to give the patient a platelet or plasma product that is ready to transfuse. Porex has been a great partner for Cerus, because as a company they understand the need to focus on continuity of supply and ensuring they have the capacity to support us long term.”
Learn more about Cerus here.
Turn over for Added Value with Erik.
ADDED VALUE
Around-the-world care
“I really appreciate having the opportunity to go on great trips with my family,” says Erik. “We tend to avoid going on ordinary holidays, and instead we try to go off the beaten track. This has brought us to beautiful places, but it always makes you appreciate what you have access to in your daily lives.”
“When my family and I were in Mozambique, my youngest son got an ear infection, so we went to a local medical facility to have a physician look at his ear,” recalls Erik. “We were advised it was easy to skip the lines by paying a little extra. We decided not to do this especially as pregnant women, young children and elderly people were waiting as well. After a while the physician examined my son’s ear using a cell phone camera. We ended up paying something like $2 for the visit including antibiotics and painkillers. This was an eyeopening experience, and it’s the kind of experience that I want my family to have.”
“It also triggers another type of motivation in me,” continues Erik.
“I believe that the technologies we have access to will ultimately have to become available to every person in the world, and this is something I try to build with my team. Besides coming to work and doing what we do, we need to be good corporate citizens as well.”
Scaling within the medical industry
“A few years ago, I read BLITZSCALING: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Powerful Companies by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh,” says Erik. “This book explores how the world is scaling at a very rapid pace, and how companies need to keep up with that. This is so contradictory with the medical industry, but we still need to apply certain concepts discussed in that book to succeed. For instance, red blood cells are by far the most frequent transfused blood products in hospitals, so upon potential commercialisation of our red blood cell system, we need to be able to rapidly scale it for maximum patient access.”
Connect with Erik
www.cerus.com