Why Temperature Control Is Now Pharma’s Make-or-Break Variable

It’s estimated that roughly $35 billion in pharmaceutical products are lost each year due to temperature excursions, any event where a product is exposed to conditions outside its approved storage or transport range.¹ As the drug pipeline shifts toward biologics, GLP-1s, cell and gene therapies (CGTs) and increasingly complex vaccines, cold chain technologies have become core infrastructure for ensuring these therapies reach the patients who need them. The use of GLP-1s in particular has quadrupled since 2024, driving significant investment in the logistics industry to strengthen cold chain infrastructure.^2,3 But effectively managing cold chain systems can be difficult because each therapy moves through a multi-step global network where even small temperature variations can damage a drug or vaccine.