An international center for the development of pharmacies and biotech therapies open to other companies in the pharmaceutical sector. This is the project that the Italian group Chiesi presented to the Minister of Economic Development Giancarlo Giorgetti on Tuesday 14 December. Biotech Center of Excellence Plant will be operational from 2024 and will be built in Parma next to the production plant and headquarters of the Chiesi family group. Which for the creation of the new plant has provided for an investment of 85 million and the employment of 105 people in highly qualified jobs.
President Alberto Chiesi underlined how the plant will exploit innovative technologies and solutions to ensure maximum environmental sustainability. This is a fundamental strategic step for Chiesi – he said again – which aims to create in Italy not only an advanced development and production center, but an international hub of excellence in the production of biological drugs at the service of patients. The goal is to develop innovative therapeutic solutions internally, creating a vertical integration of the process, from cells to the finished product, and attracting the best talents and technical skills from Italy and the world.
The Center will be open to collaboration and the implementation of synergistic projects with other realities in the sector, so as to become a point of reference for the entire pharmaceutical sector and for our country, explained Chiesi observing that the development of biological products in continuous and steady increase in the last 10 years: in the global market the sector has grown at an annual rate of more than 12% in the last 30 years and will double by 2030.
In recent years, a number of new strategic collaborations with external partners have already been developed. Among these, the partnerships with Moderna, a biotechnology company pioneer in messenger RNA (mRNA) based therapies, for the development of new treatments against pulmonary arterial hypertension; recently with UCB, a global biopharmaceutical company focused on innovative respiratory drugs and solutions, for the development, production and commercialization of a monoclonal antibody against an enzyme associated with fibrotic diseases. And then there was the investment in Cyclica, a Canadian neo-biotechnology company engaged in research activities aimed at the discovery of drugs based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, capable of predicting molecular properties in the R&D phase and drastically reducing the failure rates and the time elapsed from the trial to the patient.
The new plant will specialize in the development and production of active ingredients – from cells to the finished drug – of monoclonal antibodies (produced with recombinant DNA techniques starting from a single type of immune cell), enzymes and other proteins, up to packaging. for the global market.
Chiesi – led by Ugo Di Francesco – invests over 20% of its turnover in Research & Development, around 480 million euros in 2021, ranking first among Italian pharmaceutical companies in terms of number of patents.