This statement was made today by Oleg Astafurov, Vice-President of Government Relations of Pharmasyntez JSC, at the session “Entrepreneurship Activities in Healthcare in times of change” held under the 25th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

At the session under the moderation of Kirill Kaem, senior Vice-President for Innovations of Skolkovo Foundation, the experts discussed how and where the venture capital transformed to, what technologies were popular with investors and industry, how talented developers of medical technologies should be supported, what target markets for international commercialization were available, and whether national businessmen could replace the technologies that left the country.

“For example, earlier we purchased a new molecule for the treatment of chronic myeloleukemia. This is an advanced development of Fusion Pharma, the Russian company. Now we are enrolling patients for the final Phase III clinical studies in Russia and CIS countries. Our company is open for innovations and partnerships to create new medicines”, Astafurov said.

Also Oleg Igorevich emphasized that Pharmasyntez took a strategic aim over the next 10-15 years to become an innovation pharmaceutical company, and it is actively investing in expansion of its product portfolio and production capacity. For the last 5 years, the investment volume was more than 15 bln rubles. This year the company is going to launch two new plants in Saint Petersburg and Tyumen as a consequence of implementation of the Pharma-2020 State Program, which is focused at import substitution. In his opinion, the state aim is very effective within this program.