AstraZeneca is amplifying the investment allocated to its hub of global innovation in Barcelona. From the planned 800 million euros, it will increase its commitment to 1.3 billion euros, 500 million more than those announced just a year ago.
Precisely, at the celebration event for this first year of the center's operation, the president of the pharmaceutical company in Spain, Rick R. Suárez, announced not only this increase in investment, but also in staff: the center, which was expected to reach 1,000 employees, doubles the figure to 2,000 by the end of 2025.
The international R&D center demands professionals with multiple scientific profiles, ranging from doctors, biologists, and pharmacists to engineers, mathematicians, and data analysis specialists. In this first year of operation, the hub has already hired 500 people, from 35 countries and with 60% women. The current team is composed of multidisciplinary professionals, including experts in clinical development, regulatory affairs, biometrics, IT, and digital innovation.
Since its launch, the center has advanced at a "frenetic" pace. This evolution has motivated this expansion of the company's initial plans, whose hub already participates in 154 clinical studies and promotes disruptive strategies, such as precision medicine, genomics, cell therapy, immuno-oncology, and data science.
Through its international innovation center, AstraZeneca aims to strengthen the company's global position and, at the same time, elevate Spain's projection on the international stage. The AstraZeneca Global Hub is an essential component within the company's global strategy, which aims to strengthen international relations and collaboration, as well as open new opportunities with the biomedical and digital ecosystems at local, regional, and global scales.
"We continue to grow every day and are driving great advances," Suárez defended, at an event attended by the President of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, and the Mayor, Jaume Collboni, and in which the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, participated, through a recorded intervention. In it, Sánchez predicted that AstraZeneca's hub "is destined to be one of the largest clinical innovation centers in Europe."
The hub already participates in 154 clinical studies and promotes disruptive strategies, such as precision medicine, genomics, cell therapy, and immuno-oncologyThe president of the Generalitat has celebrated that the pharmaceutical company doubles its commitment to the Catalan capital: "We could not have a better gift." And this is the "most important investment in science and knowledge that Catalonia has received", according to Aragonès, who has expressed confidence that it will be the prologue to many more.
"With science as its flag and betting on female talent, Barcelona wants to be decisive and a place where we bet on human health," added the mayor about the hub, which aims to accelerate the emergence of the new generation of treatments in five therapeutic areas that are key for the company: oncology; cardiovascular, renal and metabolism; respiratory diseases and immunology; vaccines and immunotherapies, and rare diseases.
The center, which in 2025 will move to the renovated Edifici Estel, has its origin in the company's decision to install in Barcelona its European center for rare disease research, through Alexion, which the multinational acquired the previous year.
After investing more than 32 million in that initial center, AstraZeneca announced that it was multiplying the investment to 800 million and expanding the R&D center to its five key therapeutic areas. And from that expansive announcement, to the one now launched by the British multinational, which revalidates its commitment and confidence in a Barcelona that is positioning itself as a leader in the field of health and life sciences.