Gulam Jaffer, Founder, Yourway

Managing clinical trials is a time-critical, resource-intensive, and complex organizational task. One of the key challenges in this process is the temperature-controlled shipment of clinical trial materials to patients and biologic samples to labs across borders. Today, several pharmaceutical and biotech companies require multiple sites in different countries to attain the desired level of patient enrollment, especially for trials involving orphan drugs for the treatment of rare diseases. With trials being increasingly globalized, it becomes highly challenging for firms to efficiently manage the supply of the specialty clinical materials and patient samples. Thus, they need an integrated logistic partner to ensure that high-quality clinical trial materials are delivered to the right locations at the right time. 

One such reliable partner is Yourway that offers a full gamut of primary and secondary clinical packaging, temperature-controlled logistics, storage, and distribution services for the global pharmaceutical and biotech industries. Headquartered in Pennsylvania, with 20 additional strategic locations worldwide, the company specializes in time- and temperature-sensitive clinical drug product and biological sample shipments. 

The Remarkable Journey of Yourway

The origin of Yourway can be traced back to 1997 when Gulam Jaffer, a biology major student at Muhlenberg College laid its foundation. It was originally founded to serve local hospitals with the transportation of time-sensitive human organs and biological shipments. Driven by this vision and agile entrepreneurial spirit, Jaffer successfully led the company and over time, transformed it into a global and remarkable provider of specialized temperature-controlled logistics. 

Under his indomitable leadership, today, Yourway’s portfolio of services has evolved to include many value-added services and a global network of GMP depots offering specialized solutions to meet the strict requirements of the clinical trials industry. In addition to highly specialized temperature-controlled logistics of shipments of any size, Yourway also provides services such as primary and secondary packaging, sourcing of comparator drugs and ancillary supplies, brokerage, importer of records, and QP releases.

Delivering Truly Integrated Clinical Trial Supply Chain Solutions

“Because Yourway provides integrated services, we can oversee and control quality, operational excellence, and regulatory compliance in all phases of a project. This allows us to offer more customization and shorter timelines to implement and complete projects,” says Jaffer.

Yourway has developed an efficient transport services platform to provide better support to its customer. With its global transportation footprint, biological, warehousing, and logistical expertise and capabilities, Yourway is able to offer same-day or next-day delivery of shipments — even for specialty materials — with no size or weight restrictions. In addition to its comprehensive transport capabilities, Yourway BioPharma Services provides warehousing and distribution support, product return services, and assistance with logistics project management. Integration of all these services simplifies and streamlines project management of the clients while eliminating the need for outsourcing to and managing relationships with multiple organizations for all the logistics needs for clinical trials. 

Keeping Customers at the Core

While there are many factors that contributed to the success story of Yourway, one key element which differentiates the company from the rest is its client-centric approach which is clearly visible in their operational philosophy. 

“Yourway’s emphasis on ensuring that the client comes first and never to sacrifice quality, still present and it is now shared throughout the organizations. Everyone embraces all projects with great enthusiasm to provide unparalleled services based on quality, compliance, operational excellence, and the unique level of customization required by each project,” asserts Jaffer.

The pioneering company not only focuses on offering logistics, warehousing, and packaging support but also emphasizes on providing customized solutions to its customers. It strives to deliver maximum value to its clients with an array of customized solution-based offerings, including project management support, planning and optimization guidance, comparator sourcing, ancillary supply sourcing, forecasting, and returns/reconciliation management. This single specialized provider approach gives its clients a unique level of convenience and efficiency that translates into quality, speed, operational, and quality efficiencies.

Demonstrating Operational Resilience amid the Pandemic

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to sweep across the globe, one of the key concerns that has emerged throughout the industry is whether critical supply chains and clinical sites will be interrupted. During this unprecedented time when other providers are struggling to keep up their business operations, Yourway has demonstrated operational resilience through its robust global network, strict adherence to good manufacturing practices (GMP), and good distribution practices (GDP). 

Yourway has also been a pioneer in providing true direct-to-patient (DTP) and direct-from-patient services (DFP) for decentralized/virtual trials. Equipped with extensive years of experience in supporting various complex protocols, the Yourway team is successfully creating reliable solutions and initiating rescue projects for DTP/DFP services in areas where other providers have not been able to operate. “We have also implemented DTP/DFP protocols to support sponsors seeking to transition from traditional centralized/virtual clinical trial models to decentralized/virtual models, allowing immune-compromised subjects to remain at home but still receive therapy,” adds Jaffer.

Expanding Global Footprint While Ensuring Service Excellence

Over the years, the company has progressively refined its capabilities, technologies, and footprint to offer the best-customized solutions to support their clients in the noble mission of improving the quality of life of patients by improving the outcomes of important studies.

“From Yourway’s beginnings in 1997 to today, many things have evolved as a result of our commitment to continuous improvement. We understand that everything we do helps promote patient safety. We remain committed to this mission,” articulates Jaffer.

Moving ahead, the company aims to continue extending its global footprint by investing in infrastructure, technology, training, and innovation while introducing new added value solutions for its customers. 

“Our goal is to continue solidifying our position as the provider of choice with remarkable expertise, experience, and bandwidth to support our clients with projects of any size and complexity while offering the level of customization that makes Yourway the natural and unique choice,” concludes Jaffer.