Mexico could be a powerhouse in biotech drugs

Mexico can become a power of biotechnological or biocomparable medicines, if it manages to define an ad hoc and standardized regulation with other Latin American countries, for the development of highly specialized and personalized medicines in the treatment of chronic-degenerative diseases, said Juan de Villafranca, executive president of the Mexican Association of Pharmaceutical Laboratories (AMELAF).

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the world is immersed in important changes in medical matters, where Mexico should not be left out and venture into the future of medicine, which are biosimilars, which have turned out to be more efficient, compared to chemical medicines (traditional), to attack diseases such as cancer, hypertension, diabetes, glaucoma and others.

Participating in the Latin American Biosimilars Forum 2022 (Biosimilars LatAm – Mexico 2022), held in Cancun, Quintana Roo, the representative of pharmaceutical laboratories in Mexico stated that biosimilars originate from living cell development and have proven to be more effective for sick people.

What is missing in Mexico is to update the regulatory legislation, but my position is that we have to aspire to homologation in the regulatory criteria for biotechnological products, that is important, looking to the future”.

With this, he added, the same information (dossier) that is presented in Mexico or Argentina, Brazil or Colombia will be the same and that makes things easier and that there are more biotechnological ones in Latin America and that at a given moment we have more efficient medicines, faster and that they heal people.”

For this, it is necessary to update Mexican legislation, because otherwise, companies will not invest in biotech until there are clear rules. And it will depend on Cofepris, along with the other regulatory agencies, to agree to standardize criteria.

“What I proposed is to define what criteria we are going to have and give that feedback to the regulatory agencies, because it is going to provide the right environment for there to be investment and for us to have biotechnological medicines, which are the ones that are going to cure, especially chronic diseases. degenerative”, he mentioned in an interview.

Juan de Villafranca said that currently the national pharmaceutical industry mostly manufactures generic drugs, to move now, boldly and betting on the future, to produce highly specialized drugs – biocomparable and biotechnological -.

He affirmed that there is interest from Mexican companies to get on this development, among them are: Neolpharma, Pisa, Probiomed and Sophia, which have already ventured into biotechnology. “The trend is towards there and the laboratories have to look towards that, because that is the future of medicines, to the solution of diseases, which will be more directed”, specified the president of AMELAF.

Based on DNA and chromosomes, immunology institutes work, such as the one in La Jolla in San Diego, California in the United States, to accelerate progress towards the development of new treatments and vaccines to prevent and cure autoimmune diseases.

“It is better that we manufacture in Mexico or in Latin America, biotechnological, and not only import from Germany or the United States. But ad hoc rules are needed for this, which is something new”, he mentioned.

“Mexico has great potential for the development of biotechnological drugs and there is an appetite from laboratories,” he stressed.

lilia.gonzalez@eleconomista.mx