From finding the cure to manufacturing it

Self-help books, alternative therapies, and holistic medicine always pivot on the same phrase: "The answer is within you." Hundreds of times we have heard how the human body has all the answers to our problems. Beyond the spiritual and energetic vision of the matter, the reality is that science is increasingly approaching this need to look inward. I'm not talking about healthy diets, nor daily exercise. The latest therapies go further, they look for cells, genetic material, and even tissues; answers found within the human being that in many cases have proven to be the key to starting to create medicines for incurable diseases. This is precisely the kind of research behind the advanced therapies sector, considered all innovative human-use medicines based on genes, cells, or tissues that treat complex or incurable diseases.

Until recently, advanced therapies sounded like science fiction. In fact, researchers were limited to spending hours in a laboratory, finding and testing cures for various diseases, but without profit or capacity to carry it out. However, since innovation entered the global health sector, many advanced therapies have found a way to reach the final public. Kimberley Barnes, president of Phacilitate, an English company working in the advanced therapies sector, explains to The New Barcelona Post that "the sector has gone in a few years from being a primarily scientific field to becoming a rapidly growing commercial industry." In other words, Barnes' company is dedicated to making connections between laboratories and scientists and companies that want to commercialize the results, therefore, the company she leads has been able to see firsthand how a sector that had a lot to say and little space has reached the pinnacle of health in many countries.

To be more specific, advanced therapies currently generate a business volume in Europe of about 8.8 billion dollars (approximately 8.1 billion euros). More than a hundred of these therapies have been approved for commercialization, and this figure is expected to increase with twenty or thirty more by 2030. Outside European countries, however, it also has a lot of appeal. Specifically, the global business volume is estimated to be around 64 billion dollars (about 55 billion euros) and if growth is sustained, it could reach 200 billion dollars (172 billion euros) by 2034.

Advanced therapies generate a business volume in Europe of about 8.1 billion euros

Although advanced therapies are the main driver for achieving cures for complicated or incurable diseases, they do not always succeed. There are several issues that prevent all this research from leaving the laboratory. The first one Barnes puts on the table is the arrival of medicines to the end public. According to the expert, treatments have very high costs, especially because they are often personalized and address rare diseases, which makes their reimbursement difficult. In addition, the sector must find a way to go from treating small groups of patients to producing large-scale therapies, which requires transforming business models and manufacturing processes. In this regard, Barnes acknowledges that automation, AI, and new technologies can help reduce costs and increase efficiency: "The cure for large-scale production is innovation," maintains the expert.

On the other hand, one of Europe's problems is bureaucracy and regulation. For Barnes, the continent is losing ground to China, where the processes to reach clinical trials are shorter, as is the wait for a medicine to be approved. According to the expert, Europe has very strong science, but regulatory fragmentation between countries is a significant obstacle. In parallel, Barnes also mentions that the commercialization strategy of China or even the United States is much more solid than the European one and, therefore, there are parts of the discourse that do not reach potential investors. "We need a much firmer structure," Barnes concludes.

Barcelona, capital of health events

Catalonia is no exception to this growth and, furthermore, Barcelona is an undisputed pole of advanced therapies. The Clínic hospital itself highlighted its research on the matter, specifically on CAR-T therapies for cancer, which are already approved by the Spanish Agency of Medicines and Medical Devices (AEMPS) as non-industrial advanced therapy medicines. And not only in the health sector, Barcelona has also proven to be a great technological hub, capable of maintaining and growing revolutionary and groundbreaking companies. These great combined qualities are what Barnes considers "make Barcelona a great space for connection between people and the creation of business contacts", which makes it the ideal setting for the Advanced Therapies Europe congress, organized by the same company Phacilitate and with the clear objective of continuing to connect researchers with potential commercializers.

This year, this event will begin this Monday, September 7, and will last until the 9th of the same month. For the second consecutive year, it will be held in the Catalan capital, as Barnes considers it "a growing European hub in cell and gene therapies" and adds that they have decided to return "because there is an ecosystem of companies, universities, hospitals and organizations linked to the sector". Regarding the event, the president of Phacilitate states that "it must be a space where real conversations are held". In this sense, she recalls that the objective of the event is to openly address the main European challenges —regulation, investment, manufacturing and commercialization— and seek formulas to keep Europe competitive on a global scale. In short, to strengthen the links between countries that have made it possible for a hundred patents to have been approved in Europe from one of the best positioned cities in the sector: Barcelona.