Podcast
Illnesses can be fatal, but having to open half a dozen packs of pills every day is not. Bluepharma already has medicines where three tablets are fused into one — it’s “three in one”. Using chemotherapies that act as authentic “grenades” on patients is also not a fatality, as there are already solutions that have a kind of GPS associated with them, and will only release the drug into the necessary cells. Hear Sérgio Simões, founder of Bluepharma, at the Innovators League
There are many medications and treatments on the market that can be improved and more easily administered to patients, with fewer side effects. Based on this simple principle, Bluepharma has stood out in the world of the pharmaceutical industry, covering the entire medicine value chain, from research to production, commercializing medicines and health products in various therapeutic areas.
Sérgio Simões is one of the founders of this company created in Coimbra in 2001 following the purchase of a factory from the German group Bayer. In January of this year he assumed the role of executive president of Bluepharma Indústria Farmacêutica, replacing Paulo Barradas Rebelo, another of the founders, who became president of the board of directors.
During the Innovators League, Expresso’s podcast about the innovations launched in Portugal, the leader of the pharmaceutical group explained some of the products that Bluepharma has invested in. On the one hand, there is an effort to “develop medicines that a caregiver can put in patients’ mouths without forcing them to swallow”, recommended for example for children and the elderly but also for cancer patients whose treatments make it difficult to take pills.
Combining medications into one is another bet, which involves “inserting three different active substances into the same pill, for example”. But there is also the search for new therapeutic indications for medicines that already exist – this is, simply put, “a kind of recycling of molecules”.
On the other hand, the pharmaceutical industry has strived to make cancer treatments, namely chemotherapies, as less aggressive as possible, seeking to “find the most suitable vehicles for the molecules to produce therapeutic effects” – destroying the ‘bad cells’ without affecting the healthy ones.
And there is also the focus on gene therapy, “in which we no longer deliver drugs to patients to treat a problem, we truly deliver genetic material. The patient is the factory for their own medicine, what they need. This is already done, there are more than 30 approved products around the world based on these technologies. And we are also in this league”, explains Sérgio Simões, remembering that his group recently invested in a new factory in Cuiabá to reinforce this area of activity.
Bluepharma has around 700 workers and exports 89% of its production to more than 40 countries.
OTHER TOPICS YOU MAY HEAR THROUGHOUT THE CONVERSATION
In Portugal, there is some of the best science in the world, in the areas of gene therapies and advanced therapies. We have knowledge clusters in Portugal and Coimbra is an example of these hubs, where science now reaches everywhere
We managed to combine in the same pill the medicine that will treat cholesterol and the one that will treat hypertension and we also managed to add a diuretic that also helps to balance all this. So we make three in one
There are treatments that are like ‘throwing a grenade’ at patients
The sector is moving up the value chain and contributing to the creation of qualified jobs, directly and indirectly
The podcast that tells us what is innovative and differentiating is being done in Portugal. In the “League of Innovators”, Elisabete Miranda and Pedro Lima talk to managers, directors and professionals who tell us stories that conquered the market and are contributing to the economic transformation of the country and its image. They tell us about the victories that brought them here, but also about their anxieties, the competitors they envy, the managers they admire, the professionals they have and the profiles they need to hire. Every week, on Wednesdays.
