AstraZeneca announced yesterday an investment of 800 million euros over a period of five years to develop its new European research and development center. According to the estimates of the British pharmaceutical company, it is estimated that this will have an impact on employment in the area with 1,000 new jobs.
These new positions, the company details, will be of various profiles, from experts in clinical development and operations, to profiles linked to data analysis and computing, biostatisticians and artificial intelligence engineers, to experts in drug safety or regulatory affairs.
This would mean an increase of more than 75% of its workforce in Spain (which today there are around 1,300 workers in the country according to the pharmaceutical itself).
According to Stefan Woxström, the company’s vice president for Europe, the center will pioneer its focus on “leading global clinical projects in the discovery and development of new treatments” in five main therapeutic areas: oncology; cardiovascular, renal and metabolism; respiratory diseases and immunology; vaccines and immunotherapies; and rare diseases
The new hub will not start from scratch, in fact it will Alexion Center for Rare Diseases will be located in the existing offices, in Les Cortes. These dependencies were inaugurated in 2022 by AstraZeneca and its subsidiary Alexion. They host a clinical trial center for rare diseases, and its creation represented 32 of the nearly 400 million that the company allocated to investments in Spain last year.
Alexion is a subsidiary specialized in treatments against serious (and potentially fatal) rare diseases such as Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome or Hypophosphatasia. Its implementation in Spain is prior to the inauguration of its center in Barcelona and also prior to its final acquisition by AstraZeneca two years ago.
This new hub will form part of the network of 33 centers of the Spanish division of AstraZeneca. According to the latest data provided by the company itself, in 2020 it carried out a total of 265 clinical studies and research projects with more than 73,000 patients.
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