(May 4th, 2016) Just like fashion and agribusiness, biotechnology can also be considered an Italian excellence. The numbers are there to demonstrate this (199 biotech businesses operate within the country and are investing more than €500million in research and development, employing approximately 4,000 personnel members). Eugenio Aringhieri also backs up this claim, recently been reconfirmed to carry out his third mandate guiding the Gruppo Biotecnologie di Farmindustria. “Export in our pharmaceutical sector is at the same level of production second only to Germany. A fifth of the world’s clinical research is carried out in our country. We believe we are capable of becoming a hub for European research. The research we are talking about it concerns mainly biotech research” explains Aringhieri. Aringhieri, in addressing the objectives of his third mandate, underlines that the value lies in “continuity: Farmindustria has recognised for a long time, overall innovative research and in particular biotech research and strategic elements: on the one hand to search for answers to questions regarding health that are still unanswered (from oncology to rare diseases, from vaccines to autoimmune diseases) and on the other hand to represent an essential leverage for a country obliged to play in a highly complex sector, with the ambition to be able to occupy high positions in Europe and in the world. To do this, “Farmindustria is at stake for building a team that sees the scientific community on the one hand and on the other, the institutions by connecting the dots between the different stakeholders. A commitment that we pursue with the support of all companies that pass the baton to purely biotech companies and startups that employ their expertise in the initial development” continue Aringhieri. Today, biotech is no longer a field, but instead represents a mode in which the pharmaceutical industry has welcomed the new challenges”. Recalling the excellence of our scientific community (“For publications and citations of publications we are the top in the world, in some sectors such as rare diseases we are at the top”), the chairman of the Farmindustria Biotechnology Group emphasises that “from the industrial point of view, the numbers confirm that it is an industry willing to bet: we invest in research and development four times more than they invest in other sectors. There is willingness to invest in our country, a high risk area because only one in ten thousand of benign molecules that begin their developmental process transform into a product”. In this team work, institutions have a crucial role: “investing in innovative research is an obligation for a country pointing towards a universal approach in which the patient is the centrepiece by further developing skills in highly complex systems, increasing the country’s competitiveness. The road is still long and the problems are there but I see from all sides a convergence that may strengthen the biotech industry as a flagship of the ‘made in Italy’”. According to Aringhieri, member of the International Board of Hebe- European Biopharmaceutical Enterprises, “foreign is very important because it is now directed by these supranational macro-themes and is one of the goals of this mandate will be to strengthen the dialogue between Europe and the country: Farmindustria is working to have a more structured presence in Brussels.”
