The conference was held on September 14, 2020 in Moscow and brought together different pharmaceutical industry experts in one place: experts from state authorities, manufacturers, distributors, and pharmacy retail sector.

Despite the variety of topics discussed at the event, the pandemic became a cross-cutting issue in all disputes. Now, following six month of massive invasion of COVID-19 in all countries’ economies, we can already draw the first confident conclusions and build hypotheses for the further development of the market (including the pharmaceutical one) based on analytics and accumulated data sets. The experts shared their observations, strategies for development and on how to overcome obstacles in taking adaptive crisis-response measures.

The central questions that were discussed at the “What is Happening in the Pharmaceutical Market?” Conference – were the following: how big was the impact of the pandemic on the “PHARMA-2030” strategy? Are the goals and objectives of this strategy to be revised? How does the government support the pharmaceutical industry? Paradigm shift: new markets, new suppliers, new channels and sales formats; national safety net: production of substances in Russia - the first steps towards independence from imported products; amendments to regulations and measures to ensure profitability of drug production; and some other topics.

Maxim Stetsyuk, Executive Director of NANOLEK, took part as a speaker in the discussion “COVID-19 as the Main Threat to the Implementation of National Projects in 2020” jointly with Alexey Alekhin (Director of the Department of Development of the Pharmaceutical and Medical Industry, Ministry of Industry and Trade of Russia), Alexander Semenov (“Active Component“), Rustem Muratov (Alium), Vladimir Shipkov (AIPM) and others.

On the one hand, the panelists noted that the coronavirus highlighted industry-specific problems in pharmaceuticals, for example, dependence on imported substances. The borders with India and China were closed; air traffic was discontinued. And there was urgent need for production sites in Russia that would remove this dependence and produce drugs in a full cycle, including API. But on the other hand, the speakers noted a well-coordinated work of the regulatory agencies - the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Industry and Trade in solving the arising problems. All market players kept a dialogue constantly active which finally helped to address existing issues, open up new opportunities, and provide positive impact on its development.

Maksim Stetsyuk, Executive Director of NANOLEK, expressed his point of view:

NANOLEK is an active participant in the pharmaceutical market. One of our main tasks is the uninterrupted production and supply activities. We were able to successfully complete this task during this challenging period.

Now it is time for every pharmaceutical company to decide on its strategy. Undoubtedly, the PHARMA-2030 project is vital in terms of making the country more independent from from foreign suppliers of raw materials. Russia has every chance to set up a full -cycle pharmaceutical production plant.

I would like to note that the list of strategically essential medicines, which should be manufactured in the Russian Federation, has been revised lately (for the first time since 2010). This list now contains 215 drugs. It must include all vaccines of the National Vaccination Schedule (NVS) and the calendar for epidemiological indications. It is highly important that the government starts paying close attention to vaccination issues.

We should actively discuss the need to expand the NVS, by adding vaccinations against meningococcal infection, chickenpox, HPV, and to broaden the use of vaccines against haemophilus influenza type-b in all children. The issue is very complex and we certainly need to hammer out all the details relating to the production or localization of such vaccines. It is important to underline that launch of new vaccine localization projects helps gain new hands-on experience and new competencies, ensures the growth and development of pharmaceutical production with due regard to high technological requirements, gives an impetus for the development and implementation of in-house innovations to guarantee the national independence from imported products in the future.”