MENARINI RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY

• Focus on selected therapeutic areas
• Emphasis on development
• Project teamwork
• Strategic agreements

Since 1978, the year in which the possibility of patenting drugs was introduced into Italian law (which in practical terms means the possibility of having returns from research investments), Menarini has been able to formulate a strategic plan for a wide-reaching industrial programme. Thus began the strong investments in the Research and Development (R&D) of new drugs.

In 1978 Menarini had only 11 employees in R&D; now they number just under 800 (750).

The research activities of the Menarini Group are carried out through Menarini Ricerche, which deals with all R&D activities, from the creation of new projects up to the drug registration. The purchase of the Centro di Ricerca Farmaceutica di Pomezia (Rome) in the early '80s led to the setting up of an ultramodern biotechnology center (Menarini Biotech) and an R&D Center which are able to offer Menarini and its associates a rational, advanced research organisation. All these initiatives contributed to raising the quality level of Menarini research, taking it to 9th place in the world, according to an independent survey of the Institute for Scientific Information of Philadelphia, in the period from 1981 to 1992.

The research programmes, which are divided up among the centres of Florence, Pomezia, Pisa, Barcelona and Berlin, essentially address cardiovascular diseases, oncology and the asthma/pain/inflammation area, with the study of receptor antagonists.