Ireland must work to persuade more pharmaceutical companies to invest in research and development (R&D) here, Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Micheál Martin said as he announced details of a €250 million investment by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) which will create 150 jobs in Cork. Barry Roche, Southern Correspondent, reports.
Mr Martin welcomed confirmation from GSK that it planned to locate the production of lapitinib, the main active ingredient for its new breast cancer drug, Tykerb, at the company's plant in Cork, after much of the R&D on the drug was carried out at the site.
Mr Martin said the decision to locate production of Tykerb for worldwide supply at the plant in Currabinny, near Carrigaline, was due in no small part to the company's decision to invest some €34 million in an R&D facility at the plant in 2004.
"I think it's significant that GSK has developed a greater R&D capacity at the plant here and the drug had certain R&D work done on it here prior to going into production, and that's the continuum we are very anxious to develop - from R&D into production," Mr Martin said.
"You can see the tie. If you discover the drugs here and if you're part of the development of the drugs, then you stand a very good chance of being chosen as the manufacturing location for the drugs, and that's a chain we want to see developed in other companies in the region."
GSK's decision, with support from IDA Ireland, to create 150 highly qualified jobs at the Currabinny site over the next five years further strengthened "Cork's enviable reputation as a location of excellence in the pharmaceutical industry", the Minister added.
GSK announced earlier this month that the US regulator, the Food and Drug Administration, had approved the use of Tykerb in conjunction with another drug, Xeloda, for the treatment of women with advanced breast cancer, where the disease has recurred despite other treatment.
The president of GSK Pharmaceuticals in Europe, Andrew Witty, said GSK had some 80 plants worldwide but had decided to invest in Cork because of its outstanding record of delivering high quality, efficient and flexible responses in a rapidly changing market place.
"This facility has never let down the corporation. It has a 100 per cent track record and, because of that, we have a very high confidence in terms of increasing the amount of work we want to do here and, more importantly, introducing some of our most important medicines into Cork," he said.
"What you are seeing here increasingly are the benefits of very well-run plant, an extremely professional, highly qualified workforce under site director Finbar Whyte, which has delivered a very flexible and effective response for us as we develop our new medicines."
Mr Witty said the pharmaceutical industry was a very high-risk business and when new medicines were approved it was important that GSK could respond quickly and bring them to the marketplace. The Cork plant had excelled in this regard with delivering Tykerb, he said.
The product had been given an accelerated review with a much shortened period of study by the regulatory authorities in the US so it was important that the company could deliver it quickly to patients once approval was obtained, he said.
"We had very rapid approval but that put huge pressure on production in Cork. But thanks to the team here, we were able to supply patients quickly, and within 24 hours of the American approval, the first patients in America were being treated with Tykerb."
GSK has been in Cork since 1975 and currently employs 600 staff at its plant in Currabinny. It employs a further 1,000 people at two production sites in Dungarvan, Co Waterford, and a sales and marketing division in Rathfarnham, Dublin.
