Growth of the biopharmaceutical market is going to create critical shortages in protein manufacturing capacity with severe consequences for pharmaceutical companies' ability to deliver products and meet rising market expectations. Companies whose pipelines are heavily reliant on expression systems with limited capacity are particularly vulnerable and should now be making strategic make/buy/collaborate decisions. Indeed, in the short term as capacity tightens, contract manufacturing organizations will gain greater leverage, enabling them to negotiate more strategic business relationships with higher financial returns. In the longer term, however, innovator companies are looking beyond cell culture to alternative technologies such as transgenic animals as a future production platform, in part, because they provide greater flexibility.