This year, Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis will round off an investment of 53 million euros to expand its facilities in La Almunia de Doña Godina (Zaragoza). The aim of this plan, which also includes a new office building, is to increase its production capacity fivefold and double its export capacity, as well as to promote the creation of new jobs.

The Zaragoza plant is one of four that Novartis has worldwide for producing nuclear medicine therapies using radioligands to treat cancer. This innovative treatment combines a precision compound (ligand) that targets cancer cells with a therapeutic radioactive particle (radioisotope). Its targeted approach avoids damaging healthy tissue, which is a breakthrough in precision and personalised therapy in cancer treatment.

Two types of radioligand therapy in particular, are produced at this facility to treat adults with neuroendocrine tumours for which surgery is not an option, and which are also used to treat some types of prostate cancer.

Innovation in healthcare
Novartis' Aragon plant started operations in 2012 with eight employees. It has grown since then, and today has 102 employees, in what the company also describes as “a project for boosting the population in a region with a low population density, especially among the youngest people”. It is also strategically located, halfway between Madrid, the Basque Country and Catalonia, from where it exports over 85% of its production to more than 30 countries.

The President of Novartis in Spain, Jesús Ponce, considers the La Almunia de Doña Godina plant to be a “key facility for Spain's leadership in health innovation”. He explains that “not only is it one of only four centres of its kind in the world, but it also allows us to focus on a type of therapy that is considered strategic within the European Strategic Autonomy programme to boost biomedical research and strengthen Europe's production capacity for treatments. In addition, the commitment to this therapeutic approach provides us with a golden opportunity to continue innovating in a disruptive way to develop new solutions for some of the diseases with the greatest impact and mortality across the world and in Spain, such as cancer”.

Strategic focus on biomedical innovation
The investment was announced during the visit by the Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, to work on the plant’s expansion  to mark World Cancer Day. Sánchez highlighted Novartis' commitment to making Spain a strategic hub for biomedical innovation in Europe, and held a meeting with its employees, whose average age is under 35.

According to Sánchez, investments like the one being made by Novartis and those made by the pharmaceutical industry in general are fundamental for his government's commitment to science, quality employment and territorial cohesion. He also thanked “the entire Novartis team for nurturing the hopes of those suffering from cancer today”.

^{Photo: Novartis}