Skip to main content

By Biocat

Ferrer and Janus Developments, founded by Lluís Ruiz-Ávila in 2009, will create the company Spherium Biomed to restructure the Catalan pharmaceutical group’s R&D activity and achieve a more competitive pipeline in the middle term.

Over the coming four years, Ferrer will invest €15 millions in the new company, through which it will manage its early development projects following the Janus business model. Ferrer aims to segment research in order to make it more efficient and complement the current activity of its Galenic Research Center in Sant Cugat and Clinical Research Unit in Barcelona. The new company will be based in Esplugues de Llobregat, which is also home to Gendiag and Ferrer InCode —the group’s personalized medicine unit—, and will have a staff of 20 scientists with experience in biomedical research from Ferrer and Janus.

The new CEO of Spherium Biomed will be Lluís Ruiz-Ávila, who said, “we have a great opportunity, and an enormous responsibility, to show that the current pharmaceutical research paradigm can be changed for the better. Here at Janus we have already shown that it is possible to transform a research project into a product that can be administered to patients with moderate investment and a reasonable timetable.”

Ferrer Chief Operations Officer Antoni Villaró calls this investment a commitment to the open innovation model that “will be our antenna and our source of projects for clinical development, in collaboration with other allies that make it possible to take products to market quickly.”

Ferrer posted turnover of €830 millions in 2012, up 2% thanks to foreign business, according to newspaper La Vanguardia. The company is present in more than 90 countries and has a solid industrial structure: six pharmaceutical production plants and three chemical plants, most of which are located in Catalonia.

Sign up for our newsletters

Stay up-to-date on the latest news, events and trends in the BioRegion.