UK When the European Medicines Agency (EMA) relocated from London to Amsterdam after the UK announced its decision to leave the European Union, some analysts feared that Britain could become left behind in terms of alignment with the world’s top regulatory bodies. Perhaps cognizant of this, the UK regulatory agency for…

France A roundup of the latest stories from French pharma, including the progress of Sanofi’s COVID-19 vaccine, how Ipsen has managed to achieve sales growth in 2020 despite the pandemic, diagnostics biotech Novacyt’s remarkable rise, and a new job for former Ipsen boss Marc de Garidel.   Sanofi aims for COVID-19…

Switzerland While Switzerland has Europe’s second-highest proportion of women in the workforce, it trails global standards on gender diversity in boardrooms and in management positions. However, this situation is changing and two of Switzerland’s most important pharma affiliates are at the forefront of a new wave of diverse Swiss leadership teams.…

Norway Small in terms of market size and without the historic life sciences footprint of neighbouring Sweden and Denmark, Norway nevertheless has excellent credentials as a pharmaceutical hub, with a top notch universal healthcare system, immaculate patient data registries, and high calibre research – especially in oncology – being carried out…

Germany German biotech BioNTech has been thrust into the global spotlight thanks to its collaboration with global giant Pfizer on a COVID-19 vaccine. The company, founded by Professor Ugur Sahin in 2008 with the goal of creating a wide portfolio of individualised treatments for cancer patients, is one of the leading…

Belgium The new Belgian government has moved to streamline its response to the COVID-19 crisis with the appointment of Pedro Facon, director general for health at Belgium’s Federal Public Service Health (FPSH) as ‘Corona Commissioner.’   In his novel new role, Facon will attempt to coordinate Belgium’s complex web of political…

Poland Every year, Polish news magazine Wprost publishes its ranking of the top 200 Polish companies across all industries. Here, we profile the top five pharma-related companies featured in the 2019 rankings.   NEUCA NEUCA has been around for over 25 years and is active in numerous areas of the Polish healthcare…

Switzerland The USA is now Switzerland’s biggest export market and in 2019 Switzerland exported more to the US than to France, Italy, the UK and Austria combined and twice as much as Brazil, Russia, India and China combined. However, as Martin Naville of the American Chamber of Commerce in Switzerland recently…

UK The signing of an agreement on the terms of a future trade relationship between Japan and the UK has been welcomed by the UK pharma industry, which counts Japan as its third largest export destination. However, with the Japanese government having previously expressed concern about uncertainties arising from the Brexit…

Switzerland Switzerland, rightly regarded as one of the world’s most innovative nations, risks damaging its reputation if innovative new medicines continue to face significant delays and roadblocks in their introduction to the domestic Swiss market. Key stakeholders from pharma industry associations Interpharma and scienceindustries and local affiliate heads for multinationals Bayer…

Norway Norway, more well-known internationally as an innovation hub for oil & gas and marine biology, is attempting to reverse the trend of reducing numbers of clinical trials and cultivate a domestic healthcare research industry. Drawing on the country’s comprehensive health registries, universal healthcare system, links with its Nordic neighbours, and…

Roundup A roundup of the latest news from Spanish pharma, including J&J’s COVID-19 vaccine trial, the latest developments at Spanish firm PharmaMar which hopes its Aplidin can be used as a treatment for COVID-19, and a new biologics plant for contract manufacturer LSNE in the city of León.   Johnson &…