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That the pharmaceutical sector
is the one that shows the highest developing rate is a stated fact.
Every day it appears on  newspapers
news about mergers or take-overs involving pharmaceutical houses world
level.
This continuous race to mergers and to get big dimensions make the classification
of players changes all the time times as if there were a perfect equation
between dimensions and profitability.
Indeed if it is true that in the pharmaceutical field research investments
are such that they cannot be supported by 'small' enterprises it is
true the same that it is possible to localize market niches allowing
achieving very good results even if the enterprises are not present
among the top ten.
 Indeed it
does not lack cases of companies that by specializing themselves in
certain fields have succeeded in becoming world leaders in these areas.
A remarkable example is surely that of the Ares-Serono Group, whose Chief
Executive Officer, Ernesto Bertarelli, has underlined the purpose to
increase as an independent and innovative company.
The company, established by Prof. Cesare Serono in 1906, in fact is by
now the world leader in its traditional specialization field, that is
the cure for infertility - (a problem affecting a couple out of six
in reproductive age) - where it is present since the fifties when it
started-off the first to trade the gonadotropin extracted from the urine
of women in menopause - in the biotechnology field, in drugs for multiple
sclerosis treatment, and those for development and metabolism disturbs.
This Group, having seats in 45 countries and trading its products in
more than 100 countries, represents a very good example of  tradition
and innovation successful combining.
Even if having the leadership in its own sectors, the company has sensed
in the eighties the need to replace the natural active principles in
those therapeutic fields with drugs produced by employing the new technologies
coming from the genetic engineering.
Thanks to an intensive research activity the company has succeeded in
achieving recombinant active principles identical to the substances
present in the human body (hence reacting in an analogue way to natural
proteins), able to govern and rule complex biochemical processes and
whose possibilities to employ are several, not limiting to a sole therapeutic
sector.
The first recombinant DNA product to be achieved has been the grow hormone
(Saizen(r)) whose trade started-off in the first years of the nineties;
very important targets have furthermore been achieved in the immunology
field, with the beta recombinant interferon-  the (Rebif(r))
and in the reproductive medicine, where only the Serono can count the
whole range of gonadotropins from genetic engineering.
On the other hand the importance the Serono gives to biotechnologies
has been openly highlighted by Ernesto Bertarelli that in the preliminary
report to the 1998 balance has declared: “We are entering
an era when the biotechnology will change our life, and the Ares-Serono
is placed in such a way to take a leadership position.”
The target the company aims to is surely important, that is to change
radically patients' treatments thanks to the advances biotechnologies
put on disposal and so to become a world leader in biotechnologies.To
achieve this purpose the company has decided to go on investing in R&D
the 20% of the sales.
On the other hand research has always been the key to the success of
the company and it is carried out in 9 investigation centres, two of
them in Italy, at Ivrea and Ardea (the main technological platform of
the Group for the new products entire development activities).
Notwithstanding the Serono moved its seat at Geneva at the middle of
the seventies Italy goes on keeping a strategic role inside the group.
By 209 billions of sales out of more than 1500 billions lire whole sales,
our country represents the second market world level.
Furthermore and in dimensions term, Italy, present with the partners
Serono Pharma, Industria Farmaceutica Serono, Istituto di Ricerca Cesare
Serono and Holding Istituto FarmacologicoSerono, follows next the main
house.
To further prove the strategic role played by our country inside the
company it must be underlined that by the means of three  processing
lines, two research centres and a very important trade net, the Italian
branch represents a whole cycle strategic platform (Research& Development,
Production, Patent & Trade), the Group entrusts the most for the
middle time development processes.
The plant of Modugno (Bari) is for example the main plant of the Ares-Serono
world level for the biotechnological finished products.
Modugno covers indeed more than 60% of the fill and finish activities
of the Ares-Serono and more than the 70% products are destined to world
markets.
Another pride of the Serono in Italy is the plant of Guidonia Montecelio,
approved by the United State Food & Drug Administration, the sole
plant world level that has developed a complete know-how about extractive
and production technologies for semi- manufactured products from urine.
As announced in advance and still as regards to the research Italy plays
an important role, thanks to the Cesare Serono Research Institute of
Ardea (Rome). The IRCS, working since 1984, employs nearly 130 dependants
and it's the main technological platform of the Group world level for
the medicines developing activities. The Centre deals with the setting-up
of manufacturing processes, analytic methods, formulas, innovative administration
methods and products validation.
Still regarding the research in Italy it must be highlighted the precious
collaborations the IRCS has carried on with the main Italian  Universities,
and the participation of the Institute- by the means of a centre devoted
to develop new systems for drugs administration- to the technological
Park of the Canavese, started off in Ivrea in September 1998.
Still in our country the Ares-Serono is the main shareholder of the Antoine
Marxer Research Institute of Ivrea (RBM), the first independent Contract
Research Organization in Italy, that established in 1969 and is acknowledged
world level as an excellent centre for the toxicological studies, pre-clinic
and clinic development.
Thanks to this intensive research activity in 1998, the company has achieved
important results in developing products for chronicle diseases as the
multiple sclerosis and made forward paces in innovative projects for
the infertility treatment.
Also the data analysis highlights the importance of Italy inside the
Ares-Serono Group.
In 1998 the R&D expenditures reached 51 billions, equal to 15% of
the world whole. Meaningful also data about employment: the Italian
partners employ in fact 750 people in all, almost the 20% of the Group's
personnel.
On the other side Roberto Gradnik, the new Managing Director of the Serono
Pharma, has clearly stated which are the targets for the 2000, that
is: “to keep the leadership in the infertility sector, to grow
in the therapeutical field of the multiple sclerosis with
the beta recombinant-1a. Its new dosage of 44 mcg is the only
one having an impact over patients affected by relapsing remitting
multiple sclerosis and showing an edss score over 3.5 “. Gradnik
has further underlined that the engagement of the company institutional
level for the valorisation of biotechnological medicines and the great
concerns of the health and pharmaceutical policy.
Targets that are surely ambitious but within the capacity of a company
that over almost a century has succeeded in finding in itself the ability
to combine tradition and innovation.
Serono
Pharma SpA
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Mensile di scienza medica e
attualita`