Pharmaceuticals: 1.4 billion invested in research in Italy, flagship biotech
Fedaisf editorial staff
Uno dei fiori all’occhiello del settore è il biotech, che può contare su un’intensità relativa in termini di addetti e investimenti in R&S circa 16 volte superiore rispetto al complesso degli altri settori dell’economia
The made in Italy pharmaceutical industry is experiencing a 'research renaissance': in 2015, investments in the country in R&D amounted to 1.4 billion (7% of the total in Italy) and employees reached 6,100. One of the flagships of the industry is the biotech, which can count on a relative intensity in terms of employees and investments in R&D that is about 16 times higher than the whole of the other sectors of the economy.
A result also due to the high quality level that biotech R&D has achieved in our country and consequently of the employees (92% of the total are university graduates or have higher qualifications). And in the last 5 years the weight of investments in biotech research and production on the total of the pharmaceutical industry has grown by 10 percentage points. The subject is being discussed today in Rome at the conference organized by Farmindustria 'The biotech drug in the Renaissance of research', where the new edition of the Report on biotechnologies in the pharmaceutical sector in Italy – 2016 produced in collaboration with Ernst & Young is presented.
Biotech pharmaceutical research has led to the development of a new category of biological drugs, based on genetic material, cells and tissues. Advanced therapies currently represent the maximum expression of research progress. A sector where Italy is a leader in the world. Tissue engineering, cell therapy and gene therapy are used in as many as 7 different therapeutic areas to improve the quality of life of people affected by rare diseases. “We are now in the heart of the fourth industrial revolution – declares Massimo Scaccabarozzi president of Farmindustria – with significant repercussions on the country, which is already a production hub and could become a research hub, and on the individual territories, which have or are encouraged to create cutting-edge technological districts.
The biotech drug represents a spearhead of an already highly hi-tech industry“. “Today we witness – continues Scaccabarozzi – to an exciting wave of discoveries that brings together very different knowledge, from chemistry to materials technology, from biology to Information Technology and the precious information contained in Big Data. New horizons can be glimpsed for treating pathologies thanks to the discoveries on the genome and the strategies put in place to combat the phenomenon of antibiotic resistance“. “Curiosity and willingness to take risks.
These are the main characteristics of those who do research and above all of those who work in biotech drugs – added Eugenio Aringhieri, president of the Biotechnology Group of Farmindustria – great responses to health needs can come from biotechnology: since the commercialization of insulin up to now, 350 million patients have seen an improvement in their quality of life. And in the not too distant future, thanks to new scientific knowledge, it will be possible to offer personalized treatments in many therapeutic areas“.
