{"id":155228,"date":"2017-06-05T13:58:18","date_gmt":"2017-06-05T10:58:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/teligent-estonia-can-compete-in-the-pharmaceutical-league-2\/"},"modified":"2024-03-13T11:11:33","modified_gmt":"2024-03-13T09:11:33","slug":"teligent-estonia-can-compete-in-the-pharmaceutical-league-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/teligent-estonia-can-compete-in-the-pharmaceutical-league-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Teligent: Estonia can compete in the pharmaceutical league"},"content":{"rendered":"

Specialty generic pharmaceutical company Teligent proves that Estonia is a great place for the pharmaceutical industry.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTeligent is a specialty generic pharmaceutical company focusing on dermatology, topical pain, hospital injectable products and ophthalmic products. Teligent has grown its sales 800% in the last 5 years, while expanding the company into Canada and Europe and is looking forward to exciting future,\u201d says Jason Grenfell-Gardner, CEO of Teligent.<\/p>\n

Teligent\u2019s global headquarters and manufacturing plant are located in the United States. In 2015 Teligent acquired a pharmaceutical business in Canada, which is why Teligent now finds itself in Estonia. \u201cThe main reason why we\u2019re here was initially because of our Canadian operations, and their contract manufacturing partners are located in Europe. Since our operations are based in North America, we decided that it was much easier to manage our supply chain from a location in Europe. The next logical step after setting up our supply chain operation in Estonia was then to incrementally build on to our value chain by adding laboratory operations. In Estonia, our focus is on pharmaceutical product development, as well as on quality operations. Our quality team audits our suppliers and manufacturing partners, whether in Europe, Asia or the US, to ensure they meet regulatory requirements\u201d explains Anneli Simm, General Manager of Teligent in Estonia. \u201cWhile we don\u2019t manufacture products in Estonia, our R&D work helps to build the company\u2019s pipeline of future medicines,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n

Why Estonia?<\/h3>\n

Jason Grenfell-Gardner gives some good reasons why Teligent chose Estonia for its location in Europe. \u201cYou can manage the supply chain from other countries in Europe. As a matter of fact, a lot of companies from North America do. But Estonia makes more sense from a tax and e-residence perspective to be able to manage the business costs effectively. It\u2019s simply significantly more efficient to manage our business in Estonia than it would be in any of the other \u2018more popular\u2019 destinations in Europe. As we had operations in Estonia, we came to the idea to add a laboratory for analytical chemistry. We have a great number of incredibly qualified analytical chemists that we can recruit in Estonia. We found really good talent and we\u2019re able to transfer some knowledge from our laboratories in United States to the team here,\u201d says Grenfell-Gardner.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are the building blocks of a pharmaceutical company. We start piece by piece, one step at a time: start with analytical chemistry and the supply chain, then add quality, regulatory affairs, formulation development and eventually maybe production. At the moment, we are focusing on using our knowledge to do more chemistry to support our company in the US, Canada and potentially Europe,\u201d he points out. \u201cYes, our dream would be to be able to manufacture in Estonia as well, but we have to build the systems of processes before we make that leap. We opened our laboratory in October 2016, so the enterprise here is really young and we are about to add people,\u201d Grenfell-Gardner adds.<\/p>\n

Teligent\u2019s lab in Estonia is in a different position compared to other labs here \u2013 as they work for the parent company, they are already busy with their own projects and don\u2019t look for new partners outside. \u201cOur task here is to develop or support the whole organization to grow and to achieve our goals. Our role is to be the strong contributor to the larger organization,\u201d Simm tells.<\/p>\n

Grenfell-Gardner is not aware how many FDA-approved laboratories there are in Estonia, but Teligent\u2019s lab, in supporting activities in the US, will be one. It will also be run and managed in a certain way, as the rules are strict. He also gives an example of how the parent company benefits from Estonians\u2019 attitude: \u201cThey are always in a hurry, things get done and the approach to the work is very serious. We have big health problems to solve, so that works really well together.\u201d<\/p>\n

First submission coming up<\/h3>\n

According to Grenfell-Gardner, Teligent is working on its first submission in Estonia. \u201cThe main focus of this laboratory will be injectable drug development for hospitals. From the North American perspective, this is very important because there have been so many drug shortages, caused by manufacturing and regulatory problems. There are dozens of drugs that aren\u2019t available because of the drug shortage. We have been working on that and as we have our own manufacturing facilities, we can offer a solution \u2013 we are working on registration of our first drug in Estonia this year. There are drugs that are used in Estonia, but not available and registered by the State Agency of Medicines. Some of these products are not even approved by the European Union. That\u2019s a challenge. \u00a0We could use the network and the resources that we have to address this problem,\u201d he says. He won\u2019t agree to reveal what kind of drug this will be, but hopefully we will hear of it soon.<\/p>\n

The next challenge that Teligent faces in Estonia is figuring out what to do once they get approval. \u201cI don\u2019t know if we can answer that question yet. If you come to the market with one product, you don\u2019t want to build up your own sales force. But once the number of products grows, it makes sense to get some licenses. At the moment, we are talking about the Baltic market, but it will be a different case when we talk about the Nordic countries or the whole European Union, for example. The next step is to build a regulatory knowledge and capability organization. Once you\u2019ve done that for Estonia, the way is opened for other potential markets in other member states,\u201d Grenfell-Gardner says.<\/p>\n

Grenfell-Gardner is excited about the opportunities in Estonia for the pharmaceutical industry: \u201cWe have a lot of work to do, but once we get there, there is no reason why we can\u2019t have successful development and manufacturing in Estonia. Not just for Teligent, but more broadly for pharmaceuticals. The fact that we have recognition in Europe and the ability to use the State Agency of Medicines as a reference for other countries has the potential to achieve fast, effective and nimble response to get drugs approved and open markets in Europe. There\u2019s a lot of competition in Europe. But I\u2019m more excited about the other option \u2013 that\u2019s being able to use the knowledge base and the manufacturing potential in Estonia to look at markets in North America. Canada has mutual recognition of European standards, so we can get drugs approved in Canada based on European review. We currently manufacture in France, Italy, Germany and Switzerland, but Estonia can be much more competitive,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Specialty generic pharmaceutical company Teligent proves that Estonia is a great place for the pharmaceutical industry. \u201cTeligent is a specialty generic pharmaceutical company focusing on dermatology, topical pain, hospital injectable products and ophthalmic products. Teligent has grown its sales 800% in the last 5 years, while expanding the company into Canada and Europe and is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":155229,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-success-story"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155228"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":155429,"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155228\/revisions\/155429"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tehnopol.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}