Established in 1921, PLIVA has over seven decades of R&D experience led by scientists with extraordinary talent and professionalism. With former researchers including Nobel Prize winning Vladimir Prelog, PLIVA´s R&D has been home to numerous up-and-coming, as well as established scientists.
PLIVA is best known for its R&D achievements in areas such as sulphonamide chemistry, where the Company became one of the first global sulphonamide producers in the 1930s, and particularly in the area of macrolide chemistry, from which stems its most notable success, the discovery of today’s blockbuster antibiotic azithromycin. Licensed to Pfizer and branded as Zithromax in Western markets, this blockbuster is better known as Sumamed in Central and Eastern Europe, and remains the best selling antibiotic in its class.
Currently PLIVA´s Research and Development activities are organized and focused on the development of generics, biologicals and niche products. PLIVA has strong research and development capabilities with the most promising generics pipeline in CEE. Over the last year, PLIVA has restructured its R&D operations to fully take advantage of and integrate each of its research and excellence centers, dedicated to supporting these lines of businesses and leveraging its scientific expertise to the Company’s maximum advantage.
PLIVA focuses the majority of its R&D efforts in the area of generics development, which is predominantly organized at three major centers of excellence: Zagreb, Krakow and Brno, each specializing in specific R&D activities. The Zagreb R&D team concentrates on the development of new generic products for the US market, biosimilar products, improved chemical entities and complex generic formulations, while the Krakow site has become the Company’s development center for EU generic products, a logical step following Poland’s accession into the EU in May of 2004. R&D in Brno, however, is focused on the development of products in the area of cytostatics, as well as highly potent and other health &safety restricted products both in chemistry and formulations.
