Some of the biggest stories coming out of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region’s pharma industry, including the European Bank’s EUR 25 million investment in Pelion Group; the amendments to Poland’s drug reimbursement act; Pfizer’s legal proceedings against Hungary, Poland and Romania, and Egis Pharma’s expansion beyond Hungary.
EBRD invests €25 million in pharmaceutical company Pelion (European Bank)
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is investing €25 million in Pelion Group, a leading Polish pharmaceutical company operating in the wholesale distribution, retail pharma and retail cosmetics markets in Poland and the Baltic states.
The EBRD’s investment will support Pelion Group’s growth strategy, which includes expanding its operations in Poland through new asset acquisitions and developing new products and business lines, including telemedicine and e-commerce. The investment builds on the successful relationship between the EBRD and Pelion Group, and supports the company’s ambitions to become the number one pharmaceutical distributor in Europe.
The large amendment to Poland’s Reimbursement Act (Pharmaceutical Technology)
The large amendment to Poland’s Reimbursement Act (Duża Nowelizacja Ustawy Refundacyjnej, DNUR) finally came into legal force on November 1, although a small number of its regulations will only come into force in 2024 and 2025. It is the most significant amendment to the Reimbursement Act since it became law in 2012. The DNUR took over two years from the publication of its initial draft to reach the stage of ratification and entry into law. It is not the first ‘large’ amendment to be drafted, although previous ones were shelved before reaching parliament.
The Reimbursement Act laid the foundations for Poland’s current pricing and reimbursement system, introducing price negotiations with the Economic Commission, and establishing the systematic evaluation of medicines by the Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Tariff System (AOTMiT), as the central elements of reimbursement procedures. The DNUR, by contrast, has no particular headline measures and instead features novelties and adjustments across a broad range of areas.
After row with Hungary and Poland, Pfizer sues Romania over missed COVID vaccine payments (Fierce Pharma)
Following public spats with Hungary and Poland, Pfizer and its German mRNA partner BioNTech have kicked off legal proceedings against Romania. The lawsuit marks the latest move in Pfizer’s campaign to press countries to honor COVID-19 vaccine contracts inked by the European Commission in May 2021.
Citing a “prolonged contractual breach,” plus continued discussions in “good faith” between the companies and the country, Pfizer confirmed Friday that it’s made the “difficult decision” to sue Romania.
Velocity Clinical Research expands to Poland (Global Newswire)
Velocity Clinical Research (“Velocity”), the leading multi-specialty clinical sites business, announced it has expanded into Poland, acquiring its first site, ClinMedica Research. Located in Skierniewice, which is halfway between Warsaw and Lodz, the site marks the first in a series of key acquisitions targeted by the company in Poland by year’s end.
In addition to being one of Poland’s top recruiting sites in cardiology trials, ClinMedica also recruits patients across a broad range of therapeutic areas involving ambulatory medicine. Led by Grzegorz Kania, MD, the site has an excellent reputation for quality recruitment and exceptional patient care. The site is recognised as one of the best research facilities in the country by Sponsors and contract research organisations (CROs).
Hungarian Pharmaceutical Company Debuts New Services in Barcelona (Hungary Today)
The Hungarian Egis Pharma Services, one of the leading generic pharmaceutical companies in Eastern and Central Europe, is now offering drug development and manufacturing services to existing and new pharmaceutical partners, reports Világgazdaság.
Egis, carrying out all its Research & Development and manufacturing 100 percent of its products in Hungary, began building the capabilities behind the new service several years ago through a series of conscious investments.
Romania’s Antibiotice invests EUR 95 mln in new production line, R&D (Romania Insider)
Romania’s medicine producer Antibiotice (BVB: ATB) signed a EUR 25 million loan agreement with the European Investment Bank (EIB) to partly finance a EUR 95.4 million investment project that includes the construction of a state-of-the-art production, packaging, and storage unit, also facilitating the development of new production lines, digitalization, research and development capacities.
The project, announced by the two parties in a joint press release, “supports the creation of advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity in Romania.”
SPARC inks agreement on hair loss drug with Johns Hopkins and Czech research institute (Businessline)
Sun Pharma Advanced Research Company (SPARC) has entered into an agreement with Johns Hopkins University (JHU) and The Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IOCB) to exclusively license SCD-153 including all patents and patent applications owned or controlled by licensors IOCB.
SCD-153 is a first-in-class topical drug for the treatment of alopecia areata (involving hair loss), developed jointly by SPARC, JHU and IOCB, SPARC told the stock exchanges.
Lithuania Set to Become Home to Largest Biotech City (PharmTech)
Northway Group—a group of 17 enterprises within the fields of medicine, healthcare, biotechnical formation, and investment operations—has announced its latest project, in a Nov. 16, 2023 press release, that will see a vast biotech city be built in Vilnius, Lithuania.
The biotechnology hub, BIO CITY, will be the largest in Europe and home to an impressive six large biotechnological complexes—four of which will be state-of-the-art good manufacturing practice (GMP) plants and two of which will be scientific research centers. The whole site will be in an area equivalent to the size of 10 football fields and is expected to cost a total of €7 billion ($7.6 billion) over the course of a decade.
