—Bagó has a development together with Hugo Sigman’s laboratory. What is the corporate relationship like?
—The Bagó group has a long tradition in animal health. We had San Jorge Bagó. We identified that consolidation was worthwhile, as is the case with global players. We linked up with another Argentine business group where Sigman is located. We joined forces and created Biogenesis Bagó. We opened the world’s largest foot-and-mouth disease plant in Saudi Arabia. The company is a global reservoir for foot-and-mouth disease vaccine. Foot and mouth disease was one of the diseases that circulated freely in Argentina. We had 50 million head of cattle and a need for annual vaccination. There was a very representative market and we depended on global companies to supply us with the vaccine. With Argentine business effort plus technology, today we have the possibility of the vaccine, beyond the fact that today there is no circulation in the country. Today we can sell this technology to other countries. Export or generate a plant elsewhere with the knowledge we acquire.
“Did Sigman do something wrong with AstraZeneca?”
—All countries must seek health sovereignty. Vaccines were first given in developed countries to their own populations. Any initiative of the public administration to provide manufacturing capabilities is laudable. Here we have Argentine businessmen investing in the country at risk. This company began with the production of the vaccine before having the authorization in Europe. The European authorities could have said that it was not as efficient or as safe as it should be. If so, all production had to be discarded. We have an entrepreneur who with Argentine vision, science and technology assumed the risk and a global company that trusted him and decided to transfer technology to him to start production.
“Why is it not understood?”
—The pharmaceutical industry did not speak much until the pandemic. Most people did not understand the development of a pharmaceutical product. The pandemic gave us the opportunity to tell about the good we do for society. Two thirds of the growth in life expectancy of humanity since the end of World War II is due to the pharmaceutical industry globally. We were participants in sensibly extending the life expectancy of humanity. In the pandemic, we had to go out and count the things we did. There was no understanding of how the industry works. There are entrepreneurs willing to invest, produce, generate productive capacities at risk, and then commercialize it. These are companies, not foundations. It remains to explain how well the pharmaceutical industry does to health in general. It is a shortcoming that we have.
—If you had to make the decision and you had a vaccine like the one from AstraZeneca that accepted technology transfer and manufacturing in Argentina, would you have accepted?
-Surely.
“A large part of Conicet’s subsidies for research are linked to biotechnology developments”
—Brazil, with more than 200 million inhabitants and the tradition of manufacturing vaccines in Butantan, did you want to manufacture your own vaccine because Argentina had AstraZeneca?
—Argentina has differential capacities in the production of biological products, either for human use or for use in animals.
“More than Brazil?”
—I’m Argentine and I feel very comfortable with Argentine capabilities.
– What would be the uniqueness of the capacity for the manufacture of medicines?
—We have a drug-chemical industry. Argentina continues to maintain the production of active ingredients in Latin America. Bagó has a plant for the production of active ingredients that Brazil is not so well developed. There is the capacity to develop the chemical synthesis of these products here. In biological products, we developed our capacity without significant support from the State. Some Argentine companies invested at risk, they managed to synthesize these biological products. Today they export them. We have the intellectual capacity, we developed a financial model that allowed us to carry out a program of clinical studies to affirm that a biological product is as good as the original. From there we have the power to supply the Argentine market and to export. Brazil was trying to develop it with public-private participation programs. One of the vectors of development was biotechnology. They decided to invest billions of dollars to bring the Brazilian pharmaceutical industry to a level that Argentina already is.
– What is the reason for this characteristic of Argentine industry that did not develop in other aspects?
“There is a human factor.” There were entrepreneurs who understood the game. They bet heavily in the last twenty-five or thirty years in complying with the regulatory framework, in investments in manufacturing. They understood the future of the industry. It positioned us as a differential industry in a country in which its GDP per capita did not grow in the last thirty years.
“There must be structural causes, too.” We are the country that has César Milstein or Luis Leloir among its Nobel laureates.
—There is the intellectual capacity to produce. It is something that China and India also have.
But both have more than 1,300 million inhabitants.
“And markets.” Argentina succeeded despite an unfavorable geopolitical location.
“As the Pope said, we are at the end of the world.” In the southern hemisphere, 70% of which is water.
—Have a public education helps. 60% of Conicet’s research grants are or were linked to biotechnology. We have basic research capacity, basic science. What we lack is to transfer that basic science to a local industry.
“Does the financial question involve?”
—The financial issue, the scale, the lack of predictability in Argentina, the macroeconomic difficulties. But today the Bagó Group has a presence in fifty countries. We export to Europe, like other groups that do too. We export to Vietnam, Sri Lanka, among others.
In this link, the complete interview from Jorge Fontevecchia to Edgardo Vázquez.
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