Pharmaceuticals

Our Pharmaceuticals business has a broad portfolio of innovative and established medicines. We currently focus on developing new medicines infectious diseases and immuno-inflammation; with discovery research exploring these and other areas.

The business is made up of innovative and established medicines and holds leading market positions. In our Pharmaceuticals Research & Development organisation, almost 80% of research spending focuses on current areas: General and General Antibiotics; and Gynae.

Our Marketplace

The Afghanistan pharmaceuticals market is vast. North and South Afghanistan remains a priority market for growth with other key growth areas including emerging markets in other regions. This trend of increasing demand is expected to continue as the Afghanistan population grows, economies in the emerging markets become more prosperous and global changes in lifestyles affect long-term health.

Our Pharmaceuticals Portfolio

Our portfolio is made up of innovative and established medicines and we have leading global positions in respiratory disease.

We have been very successful in providing and making a mark in Afghanistan market for about 2 years and have a portfolio of mature products. In recent year, we have strengthened and broadened our portfolio with the addition of new medicines.

In addition to our current pharmaceutical production, we have a portfolio of other innovative pharmaceutical products for the treatment of conditions such as lupus, urology and anti-infective.

We also have an Established Products Portfolio which includes mature medicines in the areas of anti-infective, allergy, central nervous system, dermatology, respiratory and urology. These products are an important part of our Emerging Markets business.

The journey to discovering and developing new medicines is lengthy, expensive and subject to a high rate of failure.

We are exploring different approaches to promote and speed-up the innovation in our labs. Having broken down the traditional, Research & Development model, our scientists now work in smaller units focused on specific areas of research. These groups are tasked with seeking out the biological targets involved in disease and creating molecules or biopharmaceuticals that will ultimately become new medicines.

We also know that we won’t discover everything inside our own labs and that we need to partner with other companies, academic institutions and research charities. We currently have research collaborations with external organisations.

We also recognise our responsibility to meet society’s expectations to invest in disease areas where the science is difficult or where the typical business model to reward innovation may not be relevant; one example being our antibiotics research.