Narayana Rao, Vice President, Biopharma, AMEA, spoke to BioSpectrum in May, 2021, about the ways Avantor contributes to the biopharma space

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Avantor has innovated and pivoted to help customers develop and scale-up the production of novel vaccines needed to address the evolving situation.

New product lines, including cGMP, single-use and sera were introduced. One prominent focus was our expanded range of J.T.Baker® BAKERBOND® process chromatography resins including PROchievA™, a new best-in-class recombinant protein A resin for monoclonal antibody (mAbs) downstream purification.

While the pandemic dominated the work of biopharma and life science companies, Avantor was also able to focus on multiple, ongoing global needs. In the Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa region (AMEA), the chemicals manufacturing footprint at our facility in Panoli, India, served that region well. We also established a biopharma innovation center in Korea, as well as one in China. This expanded our distribution capabilities across the entire AMEA region.

In an interview published in BioSpectrum in May 2021, Narayana Rao Rapolu, Vice President, Biopharma (AMEA) discussed not only Avantor’s contribution to COVID-19 vaccines and mitigation, but described the importance of our work globally – independent of the pandemic – in other areas of biopharma and life sciences. He notably focused on the importance of strong supplier-manufacturer collaboration when it comes to innovating for the future, adding:

"Overall, collaboration with suppliers is a major area that biopharma companies can use to help enhance their regulatory compliance, minimize risk, drive cost-effectiveness and improve time-to-market for any product."

Read the full interview

Narayana Rao Rapolu

Vice President – Biopharma, Asia Pacific Middle East Africa & General Manager – South East Asia Taiwan (Including ANZ)

Responsible for developing and delivering Avantor’s global solutions to customers in AMEA region. Prior to joining Avantor Mr. Rapolu held a variety of Sales, business development, general management, integrated solutions, strategic partnerships positions with Pall/Danaher & Life Technologies. Mr Rapolu earned Masters in Biotechnology from Bangalore University in India and Executive General Management Programme from Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.

Customer support

Contact us

Ready to streamline your bioprocessing manufacturing workflows? Avantor Biopharma Production can help.

Avantor®, a Fortune 500 company, is a leading global provider of mission-critical products and services to customers in the biopharma, healthcare, education & government, and advanced technologies & applied materials industries. Our portfolio is used in virtually every stage of the most important research, development and production activities in the industries we serve. Our global footprint enables us to serve more than 300,000 customer locations and gives us extensive access to research laboratories and scientists in more than 180 countries. We set science in motion to create a better world.