Asacpharma uses the patient’s own extracted pathogens to develop its treatments.
Alicante-based Asacpharma is the best example of how, in a business dominated by large multinationals, there is also room for smaller firms if they know how to direct their efforts to the right niche. The company was formed more than 50 years ago and has specialised in three main divisions: one focused on drug development for the treatment of musculo-skeletal pathologies; another on cosmetics, through the Atache brand; and another specialising in immunology (Asac Pharmaceutical Immunology), making it one of the few Spanish pharmaceutical companies capable of producing bacterial autovaccines, one of the most important advances in recent years for combating recurrent infections and one of the firm’s major commitments to boost its growth in the coming years. As CEO Eliseo Aller explains, it was in 1986 that the group made its first foray into the field of immunology, launching a plant to manufacture allergy vaccines, which were made individually for each patient on the basis of allergenic extracts.
From the outset, they saw this speciality as a way to grow abroad, which led them to open a subsidiary in Brazil in 1995 and then another in Mexico in 1999. This development caught the attention of the French multinational Stallergenes, which in 2005 decided to buy their business fund and sales network for the whole of Europe and demanded exclusivity in manufacturing for 10 years.
It was after this hiatus that the company decided to double its commitment to this segment – in parallel to its other two divisions – and invested four million euros to completely refurbish and update its plant, which was completed in 2019. It was this investment that made it possible to add to sublingual allergy vaccines – producing their own mites – by manufacturing bacterial auto-vaccines.
The latter are used as a treatment for recurrent infections, such as cystitis or those that tend to affect the respiratory tract, and their biggest advantage is that they are produced with the pathogens that are extracted from the samples of the affected patients, which provides a much higher efficacy, as explained by the company’s Business Intelligence Manager, Julio Gosálbez.
In other words, they constitute a personalised and unique treatment, which is created specifically for each person according to the bacteria they have in their organism, which are cultivated and deactivated to manufacture the vaccine, as Flavia Hernández, head of the plant, explains. This is an increasingly attractive alternative given the increase in resistance to antibiotics that many patients are developing.
At present, Asac has the capacity to produce some 400,000 vaccines a year, though the company has already bought the adjoining building with the aim of expanding the facilities and increasing the production volume. In terms of business, its goal is to double the division’s revenues in three years from the current 7 million to around 15 million.
Overall, the company aims to increase its turnover from €42 million at the end of last year to around €60 million in the same period. Despite the fact that its main drug business is immunology, the division that generates the most revenue continues to be musculoskeletal, where it has also specialised in drug products, which allow it to gain a foothold compared to large multinationals’ products. Its latest launches include a fentanyl patch for chronic pain and a tablet to treat hyperuricernia, i.e. gout.
The group currently has five production plants. Two in Alicante, one in Murcia, one in Brazil and one in Morocco, which is another of the company’s major markets. In total, Asacpharma exports its products to 40 countries, and two thirds of its turnover is generated abroad.
Text written by: David Navarro
