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- Poland is the only country in the region to have built a biotech cluster. The prospects are excellent, and cooperation with global giants is already bearing fruit - assures Jędrzej Litwiniuk, CEO of Auxilius Pharma.

- Poland is the only country in the region to have created a strong biotech sector

- Our companies already have more than a dozen cooperation agreements with global partners in this industry

- Last year, Polish biotech companies received more than one billion zlotys from cooperation with foreign partners

- The biotech industry has decades of growth and gigantic investments ahead of it

- There is no need to create new drugs; existing ones can be improved

The Polish biotech valley

- The "Polish biotech valley" is a group of Polish companies, a cluster that is still small, yet it has emerged only here and not in other countries of our region. Similar groups have existed for a long time in many places around the world; the largest is in Boston, USA, where the biotech industry was prioritized as far back as 40 years ago. As a result, dozens of companies were created there, including names known worldwide today such as Biogen, Vertex, Boston Scientific and Moderna. I hope that one day Polish companies will be equally well known. What is certain is that this industry will keep developing for decades - Poland's asset is its intellectual potential; we have decent universities, and our scientists are no worse than their colleagues in the West - emphasizes Jędrzej Litwiniuk.

The ever-difficult cooperation between science and business

- The problem remains access to modern laboratories and to suitably equipped production infrastructure. There are admittedly a few biotech parks, but commercial companies do not have easy access to them. A few years ago we were looking for laboratories at several Polish universities and were told that "there are none, everything is taken" by entities from the region. The largest companies - Selvita, Ryvu, Celon Pharma - have built or are building their own research and development centers. Smaller companies cannot afford that, and technology parks in Poland are - fittingly - in short supply - the expert notes.

Small companies bear enormous risk

- Large pharmaceutical companies are increasingly moving away from conducting their own research. This does not surprise me at all - from my point of view, they are primarily sales companies; their main competence is the marketing and sale of drugs, and no one can match them in that. These companies increasingly outsource research or buy its results. Of course, they do so at a certain stage of a project's development, and therefore bear less risk - it is taken on, especially in the case of innovative drugs, by a small biotech company. The risk is enormous, because the statistics are merciless - only a small fraction of the compounds scientists work on will reach the next stage, and of those, barely 10 percent will make it to market - he assures.

VAM, i.e. improving drugs

- Precisely in order to reduce the risk associated with completely new discoveries, a convenient field of activity for smaller companies is VAM (Value Added Medications) solutions - the repositioning or reformulation of drugs using existing molecules that have already been clinically tested and are available on the market, so that further time-consuming and costly studies do not need to be carried out. In other words, it is the improvement of preparations that already exist on the best-studied markets and their enhancement - the active substance remains the same, while the dose range, the methods and frequency of administration change; it may also involve reducing side effects, which ultimately also lowers the cost of treatment. Such a project takes 3-5 years, whereas a completely new solution can take as long as 15 - emphasizes Interia Biznes's interviewee.

Appetite for risk

- The financial needs of biotech companies are very large. Globally, especially in the USA, the money is provided by numerous specialized life science funds. They themselves do not hide that they are looking for revolutionary solutions that will change the way a given area is treated. Such funds invest in a dozen or several dozen projects, because the chance that, in a large portfolio, several of them will "pay off" and 1-2 will be truly breakthrough is quite good. The return on a successful investment, on the other hand, is simply enormous - notes CEO Litwiniuk.

Innovation cannot be decreed

- Large Polish companies, already well established on the market, have in recent years become significant beneficiaries of state aid. There were really many grants running into tens of millions of zlotys. The problem is the continuity of funding - a company living off grants must reckon with the fact that at some point they will run out, and have a plan for what to do then, e.g. with its employed staff. The state should of course support innovative industries - and often does so successfully, as for example in Israel - but there will always be the question of results, because innovation cannot be decreed - explains Litwiniuk.

Will the "Polish Nokia" be a biotech company?

- The market capitalization of a large pharmaceutical company - one of the top "20" - is USD 50 billion and more, so it is hard to expect any Polish company to join this group within a foreseeable timeframe. Polish entities are trying instead to plug into this entire ecosystem, fully aware that the big players will earn the most from their discoveries. We run a business to help patients and let investors earn - from the point of view of the latter in particular, it is not so important where a solution was created and in which country the drug will be manufactured, but rather when and at what cost it will appear on the market. Auxilius Pharma operates in a virtual biotech model; we have no infrastructure of our own and buy all development and production services from outside, all over the world. In my private decisions I can and want to be guided by patriotism, but in business optimal quality and price matter, which is why the choice does not necessarily fall on Poland - the expert admits.

Removing legal barriers will help innovation in medicine

- The recent global economic turbulence has not yet affected the biotech industry, although - for political and quality reasons - the willingness to commission research or production in China and India has decreased somewhat, but most active substances will still be produced there. Cooperation between the USA and Europe, on the other hand, is going very well; this scientific ecosystem is already highly integrated. The challenge is something else - there are general WHO guidelines, but almost every country has its own regulations concerning health protection, medical services and pharmacy. The pandemic showed very strongly how important cooperation is here, also for innovation in this sector - notes CEO Litwiniuk.

Modern drugs are expensive, so they sometimes become... unavailable

- The issue of access to advanced therapies is painful; many of them are already approved in the USA or the EU, but are not reimbursed in Poland because of their cost. This can be understood from a budgetary point of view, because as a country we are not yet wealthy enough, but from the patient's perspective it is often a personal tragedy, because the drug exists but is financially out of reach. We are constantly expanding the list of reimbursed drugs, and Poland often negotiates prices aggressively with manufacturers. As a citizen I am glad of this, because we buy drugs more cheaply, but a consequence can also be their reduced availability when pharmaceutical companies say: "no, we will not sell at that price," or first supply the product to the countries that paid more for it. There is no simple solution here other than increasing our country's wealth - sums up Interia Biznes's interviewee.

Interview by Wojciech Szeląg