08/12/2020 - 18:07
- Clarín.com
- Society
The Government moved chips in a specific direction and the AstraZeneca laboratory , which is carrying out the trials to manufacture the Oxford vaccine against the coronavirus, was this Wednesday at the center of the scene in Argentina. The news that the country will be one of the sites where massive doses will be produced for the region -with the exception of Brazil- overshadowed almost all the political debate around the management of the pandemic and the continuity of the quarantine. It is expected that from one moment to another, the Minister of Health, Ginés González García, will release the details of the project.
In the meantime, the question is, what is Astra Zeneca? What is its scope in Argentina?
In the jargon, the divisions of work, research and production that companies in the sector have in different parts of the planet are called a cluster . After China, Taiwan, India, Russia and Brazil, the British laboratory launched its subsidiary or cluster in Argentina in May last year. More precisely, in the town of Haedo. To do this, it disbursed about 80 million dollars and completed a workforce of 405 employees.
Each of these clusters scattered around the world are focused on certain branches of activity. For example, in Brazil they are dedicated to the search and development of potentially profitable regional healthcare startups. The idea of the landing in Argentina was strongly associated with linking with local scientists to explore and promote research. For this they signed an agreement with the authorities of the Secretariat of Science, Technology and Innovation of the Nation and with the authorities of Conicet.
"Here our scope will be precision medicine, which is of the future, not only for this company, but for the entire industry," said the local CEO, Agustín Lamas at the time. "Precision medicine brings important benefits for the community," he added, "our goal is to make Argentina a benchmark country in medical precision." At that time, Lamas explained that the arrival in Argentina was part of a company program called Idream, which "seeks to connect the firm with the leading scientific research organizations around the planet in an open agenda scenario."
The choice of Argentina is linked to different factors. One of the fundamentals is the quality of the human resources, highly trained and specialized. The other, without a doubt, is to have modern infrastructure and state-of-the-art technology. There is a third characteristic that, according to industry experts, is currently related to costs. And finally, there is the weight that the pharmaceutical industry has historically in Argentina.
The vaccine is the only hope against the pandemic.
The first AZ projects in the country, before the Covid-19 irruption altered plans, were linked to testing and launching a special asthma drug. The company also planned to launch a batch of specific drugs for cancer and diabetes treatments in the next two years. In addition to improving, with new indications, at least seven of the company's drugs that are already on the local market.
Conicet and AZ have been working together since then and also through exchange agreements with the research and development centers that the laboratory owns in Cambridge.
But the coronavirus captured all the attention. In late June, company representatives, as Pfizer previously did, knocked on the door of Quinta de Olivos . They brought the proposal that today became news.
One piece of context to highlight is that AZ was not specifically dedicated to the vaccine business so far. But the vaccine against the coronavirus managed to capture almost all the attention of the British multinational so far in 2020. It is specific that its main focus is the oncology business. But the alliance with Oxford has positioned them as one of the laboratories that are close to getting the "goose that lays the golden eggs" that all nations will want to buy.
GS
