Alfasigma inaugurates the new Research & Development center in Pomezia named after its founder Marino Golinelli

Over 17 million EUR invested in LABIO 4.0 Marino Golinelli

Two days dedicated to Open Innovation and the promotion of young talent with a group of Spanish students winning Alfathon Day

POMEZIA, Italy, Sept. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- With an initial investment of over 17 million euros for the development of 5,600m2 of new laboratories dedicated to pharmaceutical technology and analytical chemistry, Alfasigma confirms its commitment to Research and Development. The inauguration of LABIO 4.0 Marino Golinelli is part of a broader corporate strategy of progressive investment in Research and Development (R&D) that allows Alfasigma, one of the first five pharmaceutical companies with Italian capital, to stand out both nationally and internationally for innovation and technological development.

The Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, welcomed the project in a letter of good wishes: "The decision to invest in research and technological innovation in Italy is what the whole country is asking of its most innovative minds."

"The research and development center of Pomezia, LABIO 4.0, was registered in the name of our founder, Marino Golinelli," declared engineer Stefano Golinelli, president of Alfasigma, "because he has taught us and still teaches us today, over 100 years later, to have faith in the future and in innovation. We believe in pharmaceutical research and in this all-Italian success story: we demonstrate this with our investment in R&D, but also with the upgrading of production plants and the acquisition of new molecules and new projects."

Inside the new multipurpose center there are the development laboratories of innovative formulations, the R&D Pharmaceutical technology labs, the R&D Analytical development labs and the new R&D Oral solids pilot Plant, to which the biotechnology and nanotechnology laboratories will be added. This plant represents one of the peculiarities of LABIO 4.0: it is able to calibrate the production of clinical-experimental batches for new specialties in oral form (granules, coated and uncoated tablets, capsules, chronoids / minitabs) operating on an intermediate scale between the Kilolab (the size of the technological development laboratory) and semi-industrial production.

Through the new Pilot Plant, it will be possible to accelerate the intermediate steps between the design phase and the implementation phase, i.e. perform micro-productions with innovative pharmaceutical forms in Scale-Up (scalability from small to large) and in Scale-Down (scalability from large to small) by exploiting the potential of the intermediate scale. The goal is to optimize existing processes, to better characterize those developed in the technological laboratories before the industrialization phase, with a consequent impact in terms of resources and timing.

The company's Research and Development department employs 138 researchers, the majority of whom are women (86 female and 52 male). LABIO 4.0 hosts about half of these which are distributed throughout the R&D centers of Pomezia and Bologna.

"Alfasigma has recently started updating the research pipeline for new products, both maximizing internal know-how in the gastroenterological area and favoring selected partnerships for innovative and frontier aspects," commented Director of Research and Development, Emilio Merlo Pich. "For example, we have some projects in development aimed at the intestinal microbiota, an area in which Alfasigma is already present with Rifaximin, and other innovative projects based on the use of biotech and nanotechnological products, with a strong interest in the area of diseases. rare gastrointestinal and neurological. These activities are supported by outsourced research platforms, such as the Microbiome Lab, recently created by Alfasigma with Humanitas in Milan, or the start-up Novavido, created with the Italian Institute of Technology. "

Open innovation and promotion of young talent – The components of Alfathon Day

On the eve of the inauguration of LABIO 4.0 Marino Golinelli, Alfasigma dedicated an entire day to open innovation and the promotion of young talent, both internal and external to the company. Indeed, yesterday Alfathon Day was held, an afternoon of talks on innovation and health with professionals that ended with the award ceremony of Alfathon, the first Alfasigma hackathon. Among more than the 40 teams from more than 10 countries around the world who have proposed innovative solutions in the context of three challenges in the field of pharmaceutical research and innovation, the first prize was awarded to an all-Spanish working group. Lluis Pascual Masiá, PhD in Medicines and Health at the University of Navarra, Irene Santos Martínez and Maria Cholvi Simó, pharmacy students at the University of Valencia, presented SituGel which responds to the need to develop a formulation platform capable of guaranteeing liberation prolonged use of the active ingredient, thus maximizing its therapeutic action. Alfasigma handed the team a check for € 5,000 to invest in the project. The winner of the #OurAlfathon, the hackathon within the company that saw the participation of about a hundred colleagues from 17 branches around the world, was also awarded.

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