In this episode of Molecule to Market, you’ll go inside the outsourcing space of the global drug development sector with Alessandro Maselli, President and Chief Executive Officer at Catalent and Franco Negron is the Chief Executive Officer at Simtra BioPharma Solutions.
Your host, Raman Sehgal, discusses the pharmaceutical and biotechnology ecosystem with his esteemed guests during a live fireside chat at the DCAT Morgan Stanley CDMO CEO Dinner.
Alessandro Maselli is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Catalent, having assumed the CEO role in July 2022 after serving as the company’s President and Chief Operating Officer since February 2019. He has been with Catalent since 2010 and has played a central role in shaping the company into one of the world’s leading contract development and manufacturing organizations serving pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and consumer health customers globally.
Alessandro joined Catalent as Director of Operations at the company’s pharmaceutical, nutrition, and cosmetics facility in Italy. Over the course of more than a decade, he progressed through a series of increasingly senior leadership roles, including General Manager of the Zydis® operations in Swindon, U.K., Vice President of Operations for Europe within the Drug Delivery Solutions business, and Senior Vice President of Global Operations. In these roles, he oversaw multi-site global manufacturing networks, large-scale capacity expansions, and complex technology platforms across oral solid dose, biologics, and advanced delivery modalities.
As Chief Executive Officer, Alessandro led Catalent through the COVID-19 pandemic, during which the company played a critical role in the global response by supporting vaccine and therapeutic manufacturing at unprecedented scale. More recently, he has overseen Catalent’s transition to private ownership following its $16.5 billion acquisition by Novo Holdings, positioning the company for long-term investment and growth as a privately held global CDMO.
Prior to joining Catalent, Mr. Maselli held a range of operational and business leadership roles at ABB Group, Alstom, and SGS, gaining extensive experience in industrial automation, engineering, and large-scale manufacturing operations. He began his career as an automation systems engineer in the food industry. In addition to his executive role, Alessandro serves on the Board of Directors of Graphic Packaging Holding Company, to which he was appointed in May 2025. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electronic engineering from the University of Rome and is a native of Italy.
Franco Negron is the Chief Executive Officer of Simtra BioPharma Solutions, a leading sterile injectable contract development and manufacturing organization formed following the divestiture of Baxter International’s BioPharma Solutions business. He was appointed CEO in 2023 by Advent International and Warburg Pincus to lead the business as an independent, private-equity-backed CDMO focused on clinical-to-commercial parenteral manufacturing. Franco is an industry veteran with nearly 30 years of pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical experience, bringing deep expertise across sterile manufacturing, commercial operations, and global supply chain leadership. Prior to joining Simtra, he served as Chief Executive Officer of ApiJect Systems America, a medical technology company focused on advanced drug-delivery and injection systems. Earlier in his career, he held senior executive roles at Thermo Fisher Scientific, where he served as President of Commercial Operations, and at Patheon Pharmaceuticals, where he was President of Development and Commercial Operations, North America, playing a key role in scaling Patheon’s CDMO platform prior to its $7.2 billion acquisition by Thermo Fisher in 2017.
Franco has also held leadership positions at several major pharmaceutical companies, including Vice President of Manufacturing and Supply at Valeant Pharmaceuticals, Global Vice President within Novartis’ Consumer Health division, and Site General Manager at McNeil Consumer Healthcare.
Across these roles, he developed a reputation for operational excellence, customer-centric leadership, and the ability to lead complex manufacturing organizations through periods of transformation and growth. As CEO of Simtra, Franco is leading the company through its next phase of expansion, focused on strengthening its sterile fill-finish capabilities, advancing technical differentiation, and investing in capacity to support increasing demand for injectable biologics, vaccines, and complex parenteral products
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