Throughout 2025, drugmakers of all stripes have collectively poured billions of dollars into U.S. manufacturing investments. Many of those projects have centered on later stages of the production process, such as drug substance manufacturing or fill-and-finish infrastructure, while the fundamental steps required to produce drug ingredients continue to stand out as a potential blind spot for the nation.
Aware of that lack of active pharmaceutical ingredient infrastructure in the U.S., private equity firm Curewell Capital is aiming to close the gap with a majority investment in specialty CDMO Wilmington PharmaTech, Wilmington announced Tuesday.
With the extra cash on hand, WPT plans to expand its production capacity and further scale its end-to-end capabilities for manufacturing a “full range of small molecule API in the U.S,” the CDMO said.
“As a private investment firm focused exclusively on healthcare, we’ve been actively looking for a long-term investment in the CDMO sector, and specifically in complex API manufacturing,” Curewell Partner Michael Dal Bello said in an interview with Fierce Pharma ahead of the investment announcement.
In turn, Curewell has been working with WPT in the background on a plan Dal Bello hopes will help the CDMO’s customers gain more control over their development timelines and ensure they’re able to source drug ingredients from a dependable U.S. source.
“We see a huge need to build U.S.-based manufacturing capabilities in this current environment, and bringing back drug manufacturing, high quality science and biopharma jobs to us, I think, is something that many of our customers are focused on,” he added.
Aside from an initial investment, Curewell will continue to pump cash into WPT over time, according to Dal Bello. The PE partner did not disclose the size of the investment Curewell is making but noted that the total outlay in WPT will eventually reach “nine figures.”
“While we’re investing in WPT, we also have incremental funding to do acquisitions on behalf of Wilmington PharmaTech," Dal Bello said.
As part of the arrangement, WPT founder and CEO Hui-Yin “Harry” Li, Ph.D., will retain a "significant ownership stake" in the CDMO and will continue to be in charge of the business, according to the Tuesday press release.
Dal Bello described Wilmington as akin to “the industry’s best-kept secret,” noting that the company does not have a huge public profile but has built strong and consistent relationships with its clients over the years.
WPT started operations in 2003 and has contributed to the development of “multiple blockbuster drugs” over that time, Dal Bello said. The company has a background in complex synthesis, medicinal chemistry, scale-up and good manufacturing practice supply, according to its press release. The company’s service offerings run the gamut from early discovery and clinical development through commercial supply.
The CDMO currently operates out of a 54-acre campus in Delaware, where it hosts two adjacent facilities for production. The site includes dedicated suites for high-potency API production and is equipped to provide registered starting material support, too, Wilmington said.
The company separately operates an “accelerated development and analytical support facility” in Suzhou, China.
To hear WPT’s chief executive Li tell it, the CDMO started its journey as a “niche company,” helping biotechs move investigational compounds into the clinic. As the work of WPT clients has advanced, so too has the CDMO’s need to grow its manufacturing footprint, Li explained.
While WPT is already producing at least one commercial product in Delaware, a key part of Curewell’s investment “thesis” is to help the company “expand to larger scales as well as larger capacity,” Kent Payne, Ph.D, operating partner at Curewell, said during the interview.
Many U.S. manufacturing investments have been announced so far in 2025 amid the Trump administration’s tariff-fueled push toward onshoring drug production. Still, many of those projects have focused on other steps in the manufacturing process rather than the production of drug ingredients themselves.
“There are some larger players in the U.S. still—although probably many more in other countries—in the small molecule API space,” Payne explained. “But they’re typically very large, focused on very large scale, and we think that there’s a specific need for these more niche and again, difficult-to-manufacture compounds, where Harry and his team not only master the early chemistry, but the process development and scale-up.”
Curewell’s investment comes about two months after the equity firm closed its inaugural fund at $535 million. Curewell has said the fund will build on its team’s “established strategy of acquiring leading U.S. healthcare businesses across healthcare services, pharmaceutical services, medical devices, and healthcare technology.”