Domestic pharmaceutical manufacturers managed to replace imported drugs in a short time.

There will be no shortage of medicines in Russia: we will provide our country with medicines - this promise was made by Peter Bely, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Promomed Group, at a visiting meeting of the Council on Intellectual Property of the Federation Council, held in Saransk two years ago.

It was then that our state found itself under unprecedented sanctions pressure. Experts argued: will the domestic pharmaceutical industry survive in such conditions? Will Russians face a shortage of modern effective drugs after leaving the market of Western companies? Time has shown that the fears were groundless - the drug manufacturers kept their word: over the years they have managed not only to resist, but also to make a huge leap forward.

A good example of how the situation in our pharmaceutical industry has changed since then is the Saransk Biochemist plant. Created back in 1959, the newest biotechnological production at that time provided a huge country with antibiotics for a long time. In recent years, the plant has become unrecognizable - it has become a modern, rapidly developing enterprise. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the first domestic drug for the treatment of coronavirus infection was launched here, and soon the company's "anti-COVID portfolio" was replenished with new proprietary developments that helped save the lives of hundreds of thousands of patients. The plant was able to reorient production to meet the primary needs of domestic healthcare in the shortest possible time.

Sanctions and the withdrawal of foreign pharmaceutical companies have become a new challenge for the country. In response, as early as December 2022, a new high-tech tablet production line was launched in Saransk for the production of strategically important drugs, including in case of termination of import supplies. This is one of the most modern production facilities in Europe: it uses technologies for vacuum transfer of tablet components, the most accurate automatic means of dosing, preparation and control. The influence of the human factor on product quality is minimized. There are only four such lines in the space from Europe to China. The quality of the products is definitely not inferior to the quality of the best foreign factories. Investments in the project amounted to more than 1.8 billion rubles. The production facilities are designed to produce up to a billion tablets per year.

The inclusion of a new production site in the range of Russian pharmaceutical manufacturers will allow us to become more confident," Mikhail Murashko, head of the Russian Ministry of Health, stressed in his video message on the occasion of the launch of the line, expressing the hope that this would be the key to the development of healthcare in general and the pharmaceutical industry in particular.

More recently, experts have noted a critical dependence on foreign active pharmaceutical substances (APIs) as one of the main pain points of the Russian pharmaceutical industry. Thus, at the beginning of 2022, the share of imported substances (active substances of drugs. - Ed.) accounted for about 80 percent of the total volume in the domestic market. India and China supplied 76.7 percent of this figure, the EU countries - 19.7, and the rest - 3.6 percent.

Therefore, the opening of a new plant for the production of APIS has become a strategically important step forward in ensuring the country's drug safety. A year ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched such an enterprise in the capital of Mordovia via video link.

It is important for us to increase the production of Russian substances, increase the share of domestic drugs in the domestic market, including original ones, and strengthen our independence from suppliers from abroad, especially from those suppliers who sometimes create a lot of difficulties for us," the head of state stated.

For the country, the creation of pharmaceutical substances is as important as space exploration," emphasized Peter Bely, illustrating the breakthrough possibilities of such production.

The main tasks for the Russian pharmaceutical industry today are the transition to full-cycle production and the achievement of technological sovereignty. An important step in this direction should be the creation of a federal biotechnology development center in Mordovia. Such plans were discussed last July at a meeting between the Head of the Republic of Moldova, Artyom Zdunov, and the Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, Valery Falkov. Today, biotechnological drugs are considered the most effective way to treat a wide range of diseases. The priority task in the production of such medicines is to ensure independence from foreign raw materials. It was noted at the meeting that medical products on the Russian market should be available and not depend on imported supplies.

"The main tasks for the Russian pharmaceutical industry today are the transition to full-cycle production and the achievement of technological sovereignty"

The biotechnology Center will be established on the basis of a pharmaceutical company and the Mordovian State University. It will become a platform for trilateral cooperation between government, business and science. The project will also be interesting for young scientists who create startups. They will be able to work, conduct research and receive data in one place.

We act as an industrial partner," explained Petr Bely. - At the same time, the results of the center's activities will be available to all interested parties. This is a partnership for the sake of patient health. The center will create biological drugs that open a new era in the treatment of a large group of diseases that were previously considered incurable. By combining our efforts, we will be able to make a real breakthrough in the creation of drugs.

One example of such a breakthrough is the situation with drugs for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. When a foreign manufacturer announced the cessation of supplies of the latest generation of drugs to Russia, patients with this diagnosis could actually find themselves without therapy. The company has devoted all its efforts to developing its own medicines, and within nine months has ensured full import substitution in these positions. Moreover, domestic analogues are produced using the original full-cycle technology: from the substance to the finished mold and syringes. New products are also successfully used for the treatment of obesity and the correction of overweight. The drugs have already gained the trust of patients, and the company's production facilities can even cover the current annual demand of the country, if necessary.

And in the near future, the company plans to implement another project. In the near future, a workshop for the production of lyophilizers and preparations in pre-filled syringes will open in Saransk.

A source: rg.ru

1. https://rg.ru/2024/03/27/recept-ot-sankcij.html