The infrastructure that carries biology to scale.

the Chair.

Dr Uwe Gottschalk sets the standard for the conversation at BILS. As former Chief Scientific Officer of Lonza and now Operating Partner at Keensight Capital, he edits Process Scale Purification of Antibodies, the reference text, now in its third edition. Bioprocessing Lifetime Achievement Award, 2021. In Berlin, he opens the room where the plant meets its partners.

The gap.

Biology moves faster than the infrastructure designed to carry it. A February 2026 industry study traces 64% of launch delays to chemistry, manufacturing and controls.

The Conversation.

The room where biologics ambition becomes clinical supply. The leaders who carry the accountability meet here before the inspection does. Here the AI strategy conversation opens, at the plant, where accountability is already law. For the leaders who own the plant, sign the batch and govern the intelligence behind every release.

The connected plant.

Only 35% of biopharma manufacturing executives describe their company as connected, in a February 2026 industry study. WuXi Biologics runs a digital twin of its bioprocess, monitoring more than 40 process and quality attributes in real time. In April 2026 Cytiva co-launched Figurate SCADA, a unified digital control layer across equipment from multiple vendors. MSD is taking agentic AI across manufacturing.

The capital.

MSD has a 60,000 litre mammalian plant in build to manufacture for it, and a billion-dollar biologics centre under way in Delaware. WuXi Biologics grew revenue 18.4% in the first half of 2026, with construction under way in Singapore, the United States and China. Sanofi broke ground in October 2026 on an insulin plant in Frankfurt, built to run AI across manufacturing and quality.

The constraint.

Every gain upstream arrives at purification. A filtration step sized for the old process sets the pace of the new one. Sartorius has carried continuous processing into purification, and Asahi Kasei is building a fourth plant for its Planova virus filters. That is where bioprocess partners are needed most, and where BILS puts them in the room.