A New Recipe for America’s Drug Supply

Phlow and Antheia team up to expand US medicine production as nearly 80 percent of APIs and KSMs are manufactured outside the U.S.

25 Nov 2025

A quiet shift is under way in America’s pharmaceutical industry. Phlow and Antheia, two young firms, have formed an alliance to rebuild the country’s capacity to make the raw ingredients that keep hospitals and pharmacies running. Their move comes as fragile global supply chains continue to expose how dependent the United States has become on production abroad.

Most active ingredients and key starting materials are now made offshore, leaving drug makers exposed whenever geopolitics or health emergencies disrupt trade. The Phlow Antheia partnership is meant to reduce that risk by returning advanced fermentation and chemical processing to domestic sites.

Antheia uses controlled microbial fermentation to produce complex, often scarce inputs. The method avoids unpredictable botanicals and cuts the energy needs of traditional chemical synthesis. Phlow then turns these fermented intermediates into finished medicines using continuous flow systems built for speed and accuracy. Its chief executive has called securing domestic access to these inputs a strategic imperative for the sector.

The collaboration also shows the wider push to revive American biomanufacturing. For years the country has lacked large scale fermentation capacity, even as demand for flexible, technology driven production has grown. By combining their strengths, the firms hope to nudge the field toward a new phase of home grown innovation.

Barriers abound. Domestic production is costly, and the fermentation business is crowded with overlapping technologies that can trigger intellectual property fights. A BARDA representative said lasting policy support will be vital and called the partnership a strong example of how public and private efforts can align to modernise the nation’s pharmaceutical backbone.

Even so, optimism is growing. Early signs of progress have caught the eye of industry watchers who think the effort could spur new investment in domestic production. For them, the alliance hints that America may be ready to reclaim more control over its medicine supply and rebuild a system defined by reliability, speed and a touch of renewed ambition.