Michael Gardner, head of pharma specialised network, DHL Supply Chain, outlines how advanced therapies are rewriting logistics playbooks.
DHL Supply Chain
The pharmaceutical industry is undergoing its most significant supply chain transformation in decades, driven not by efficiency demands but by scientific breakthroughs that are fundamentally changing what medicine looks like, and how it must move. Where pharmaceutical logistics once focused on moving large batches of uniform products, many modern shipments now contain only a limited number of highly specialised therapies. These individual doses can carry exceptional value, scientific, clinical, and financial, and are often produced for a single identified patient.
The shift from mass-market treatments to individualised, highly sensitive therapies is rewriting the rules of global logistics, raising the stakes and reshaping the very definition of reliability.
What’s driving the transformation?
For most of the modern pharmaceutical era, logistics meant scale. Pallets of pills, bottles, blister packs, products stable enough to tolerate minor deviations, abundant enough to maintain buffers, and predictable enough to send through shared networks without concern. That world still exists. Traditional pharmaceuticals, medical devices, diagnostics, and consumer health products remain the backbone of healthcare distribution.
But alongside this familiar landscape, a new category of advanced therapies is rising fast. Advanced therapies include biopharmaceuticals, specialised vaccines, radiopharmaceuticals, and, perhaps the most transformative, cell and gene therapies. These products are more sensitive and more bespoke than anything the industry has handled before. They are often engineered for extremely narrow patient populations, sometimes even for a single individual.
A flu vaccine campaign might still move hundreds of pallets through cold chain networks every year. But a cutting-edge oncology therapy may move in units of ten or one. In some cases, patient cells are collected via leukapheresis, shipped to a manufacturing site, genetically modified or otherwise processed, and then returned for reinfusion. The logistics process is effectively part of the treatment itself.
Despite the tiny volumes associated with advanced therapies, the category’s projected to grow at a rate that would be remarkable in any sector, let alone one dealing in comparatively small batch sizes. The demand for these products stems from their transformational impact on patient outcomes, providing treatment pathways that were once unthinkable. However, their value and sensitivity mean logistics processes become even more vital.
Failure isn’t an option
Advanced therapies don’t just challenge the infrastructure of healthcare logistics, they transform the stakes.
A single cold box might represent years of scientific research and development. There may be no backup unit, additional manufacturing slot or replacement dose available. These aren’t standard commercial batches but highly specialised, patient-specific medicines. As a result, expectations around reliability and control have increased significantly.
Traditional supply chain models are often designed to optimise logistics efficiency because product value is low relative to distribution cost. But when a single dose can exceed $1 million in value, the question shifts from ‘How cheap?’ to “How reliable?’ can the process be.
This shift introduces considerable operational implications:
Standard networks don’t work. Advanced therapies depend upon very specific conditions which must be maintained to ensure viability and can’t be catered for using standard shared networks. They require dedicated or highly controlled networks, utilising specialist vehicles, carefully designed routes, often with the same trained driver visiting the same hospital to ensure nothing is left to chance.
Precision replaces speed. Speed matters, but controlled precision matters more: validated processes, sequenced handovers, monitored dwell times, and minimal touchpoints. Every step must be documented and every minute counts, due to the sensitivity of the products and the patients.
Stringent temperature regulation. Where traditional pharmaceuticals may tolerate temperature variation, advanced therapies require much tighter control. Real-time monitoring, including GPS, temperature, shock and humidity, is increasingly required, depending on modality. For cryogenic shipments, LN₂ tanks have intrinsic stability, so monitoring focuses on location and remaining hold time.
Human reliability becomes a design factor. Delivery might involve only three to five drops per day because each one can take more than an hour. Drivers need both training and familiarity, understanding how to handle the cargo, while knowing exactly where to go inside a hospital estate to avoid delays.
Data intelligence becomes essential. AI and analytics are increasingly used to analyse lane risk, validate packaging performance, and model out temperature stability from origin to destination. Instead of relying on manufacturers’ quality teams to assess risk corridors, logistics providers are beginning to take on that responsibility directly.
The consequences of failure in the handling of advanced therapies are no longer just about revenue, they’re about patient outcomes. This introduces a new set of expectations for the supply chain, and requires a different level of care, coordination, and assurance at every step.
Where the industry goes next
As advanced therapies scale, new pressures are emerging. Sustainability is perhaps the most urgent. Smaller, more frequent shipments increase environmental impact, and temperature control only adds to the energy burden.
The challenge for manufacturers and logistics partners is to maintain the uncompromising precision these therapies require while reducing the environmental cost of delivering them.
The rise of advanced therapies represents a profound scientific breakthrough but it also represents a logistical turning point. The industry is now transporting treatments so valuable, fragile and personal that, where once logistics supported medicine, today logistics is part of medicine.