On November 7-8, 2019, Saint Petersburg hosts the IX International partnering forum “Life Sciences Invest. Partnering Russia” that is primarily focussed on supporting relevant federal initiatives in the development of the industry market.

Economic prosperity of a specific country is based on comfortable life of its citizens, social security, promotion of peoples’ health. Ambitious goals require a comprehensive approach to their achievement, that is why this year the main subject of discussions were the ways to improve the investment attractiveness of the Russian Life Sciences market; achieving the national health goals for the period up to 2024; drug safety and affordability; transfer of technology and innovations; improvement of state support measures for the pharmaceutical sector; establishment of national drug policy; development of partnership relations with global clusters.

Maxim Stetsyuk, Executive Director of NANOLEK, took part in the thematic session “Implementation of medicine provision principles” moderated by Zakhar Golant and Herman Inozemtsev.

Participants of the panel discussion - Lyudmila Sychevskaya (Health committee of St. Petersburg), Vadim Tarasov (Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University, Arkady Stoplner (Berezin Medical Institute) - discussed the development of the medicine provision system for various patient groups, including high cost and orphan drugs as well as the prospects for launching the mechanisms of interaction models on risk-sharing and cost-sharing basis.

Maxim Stetsyuk outlined the peculiarities of vaccine production considering the need to sign long-term government contracts as well as the prospects for the affordability of breakthrough biological drugs for Russians through a step-by-step expansion of local manufacturing with due regard to technological environment.

“If it comes to the development of an overall strategy as part of the health system, we should keep in mind that profitable investments are a contribution towards prevention of diseases. It all starts with proper nutrition, development of sports culture in the country, immunoprophylaxis, development of disease diagnosis and treatment programs and only once we have reached this stage we can talk about drug provision.

As a representative of a vaccine manufacturer, I would like to stress that we still have to tackle various challenges despite existing statutory provisions. I will give an example: currently, we produce polio vaccines in 5-dose vials and would like to switch to disposable syringes with monodoses (to ensure ease of use and reduce financial losses since an opened vaccine is no more storable), however we confront ourselves with price control issues: switching to disposable syringes does not play into the prices proposed by the government.

Besides, the country needs to expand analytical bases by making high-quality, regular health checkups (periodic health assessments should be cultivated among people). Laboratories should gather new experience in conducting complex tests to deliver analytics for pharmaceutical companies as a basis to create immunobiological drugs. In this respect, we closely collaborate with universities and educational institutions to meet the need for skilled employees.

All these challenges are solvable as part of the strategy that can be developed through a close interaction between the state and the commercial sector only,” said the Executive Director of NANOLEK.