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The Combination Product Blind Spot | with Nathan Kast
Episode 2 of the Navigating the Combination podcast has dropped!
In our most recent episode of Navigating the Combination, Parth Kothari and Jonathan Amaya-Hodges sit down with Nathan Kast, a seasoned combination product professional whose career has spanned SHL, Becton Dickinson, and now Stevanato Group. Nathan shares how he stumbled into the drug delivery space entirely by accident, why being a great mentee matters more than finding a great mentor, and what it actually takes to build the kind of supplier-pharma relationships that get therapies to patients faster.
The conversation digs into one of the most persistent gaps in the industry: the tendency of smaller and mid-sized pharma companies to treat drug containment and delivery systems as packaging rather than as integrated parts of the development process. Nathan breaks down why that mindset is rational but costly, how pricing pressures and supply chain regionalisation are reshaping device strategy, and why standardization is rapidly becoming table stakes rather than a differentiator. A candid, experience-driven episode for anyone working at the intersection of device development and pharmaceutical commercialization.
Key takeaways:
- Being a good mentee — staying humble, open to mistakes, and eager to learn — is what attracts strong mentors, not the other way around
- Smaller pharma companies often treat drug delivery systems as packaging rather than as integrated development components, leading to costly late-stage surprises
- Framing decisions around total cost of ownership (TCO) helps pharma partners see the downstream risks of deferring device integration conversations
- True supplier-pharma partnership means transparent dialogue about constraints on both sides — not just pushing risk downstream
- Supply chain regionalisation post-COVID is accelerating, and pharma is now making strategic asset-level decisions about what to near-shore versus centralise
- Device differentiation has largely shifted from a competitive advantage to a reliability and scalability question — it’s now table stakes for at-home care
- Pharma companies are splitting into two camps: those adopting standardised platform devices from suppliers, and those building proprietary internal platforms across their whole portfolio
- Understanding why a request is being made — not just what is being asked — leads to better outcomes for everyone in the development chain
Connect with Nathan Kast on LinkedIn.
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