Pace Life Sciences, a U.S.-based contract research, development and manufacturing organization (CRDMO), is investing in the growth of its recently expanded Salem, New Hampshire, lab by joining NH Life Sciences (NHLS).
“We've been involved in the MassBio community since we started,” said Frank Tagliaferri, Ph.D., the chief scientific officer at Pace Life Sciences. “I didn't know as much about the New Hampshire life science community until more recently. It was a logical thing. There are a bunch of companies there. … We work with a couple and even have competitors that are doing similar work.”
Several existing members of NH Life Sciences are contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs), similar to Pace.
As a CRDMO, Pace can provide a continuum of services across the entire drug development spectrum, which limits the need for multiple handoffs between separate research, development and manufacturing entities.
“A lot of our kind of clients are looking for more of a partnership, in terms of hoping we can take their product through the entire development process,” Tagliaferri said. “Once we get involved in the project, we're the experts. If we can keep working it through with our development folks, as well as our regulatory folks, the whole process is integrated. We know what the regulatory requirements are going to be, and we're making sure we're meeting them. We keep things on track in terms of timelines and avoid surprises that can arise if you're working with separate organizations.”
Pace acquired Bio Concept Industries in Salem in 2020, at a time when they were doing ophthalmic and otic development of eye and ear drops. That was a more limited market for Pace, so the recent site expansion has added capabilities for sterile injectable filling.
“Pace develops a lot of small and large molecules that need to be injected,” Tagliaferri said. “That fits kind of nicely with what we do in Boston, working on a lot of gene therapies and antibodies and biologic-type things, which need to be injected. For us to develop those technologies, scale them and transfer them to a site like Boston, where they can fill them into vials and get them out to patients, that makes sense for us strategically.”
One of the industry trends Tagliaferri notices is the bifurcation between large and small CDMOs. He sees Pace as a key resource for companies that want careful attention even when manufacturing smaller batches.
“There are the large players in the game that do multimillion-dollar manufacturing lines,” he said. “Then there's the contrast of small, focused CDMOs, which help bring the more modest drugs to market. The smaller companies really have flexibility and focused scientific staff that you don't find in a larger place. A lot of times, a smaller company gets lost if they're going to be at a big site that's making billions of doses. As an industry, a lot of companies are … staying modest to be able to help those clients. I think that's a good area for us.”
Adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) is an emerging trend in pharma and biotech, he noted. While its applications in the drug development Pace does is still emerging, Tagliaferri is seeing AI applications for early-stage design and discovery phases and later-stage toxicology predictions and clinical trial design.
The other trend is research and development of oral delivery of injectable therapies, particularly GLP-1s. At the end of 2025, NHLS member Novo Nordisk received approval for its oral version of Wegovy, a GLP-1 medicine for obesity.
“There’s a push to move those towards oral administration,” Tagliaferri said. “Our earlier stage lab in Boston does more early-stage R&D, and that's typically what they work on: oral peptides, long-acting peptides, delivering molecules through the mouth so you don't have to inject them.”
The Salem facility is a Center of Excellence for Sterile Fill-Finish processing that works closely with the Boston lab. Tagliaferri noted that, as a town, Salem has room for expansion as the company grows. The Salem fill line and facility enhancements enable Pace to provide industry-leading service to its clients seeking the production of injectables like vaccines, gene therapies, antibodies and protein-based therapeutics.
“We would like to work with local companies,” Tagliaferri said. “We can offer all kinds of services. We're really just looking for people to help.”