Controversial Portuguese drug company Bial has been given a €37.4 million research grant despite having misued a payment made for scientific studies in 2015.
Bial, made internationally famous after the death of a volunteer drug tester in France last January. Others were hospitalised in the BIA 10-2474 molecule tests that went horribly wrong as the company searched for a treatment for Parkinson’s disease at the Rennes laboratory of Biotrial.
The latest grant, signed off by the government using EU funds from the PT 2020 programme, is for scientific research in the areas of central nervous and cardiovascular systems.
The signing of the investment agreement between Bial and the State Agency for Investment and Foreign Trade of Portugal (AICEP) is part of a system of incentives for research and development approved by the Council of Ministers last December and lasts until 2018.
At a ceremony at the company’s base in Trofa, Oporto today, Prime Minister, António Costa, said, "This Bial investment is particularly relevant to the model that the country definitely has to take on, which is the development of innovation."
Forgetting his undertaking only to use the word 'paradigm' once in any speech, the PM had a swipe at Portugal’s drugs counterfeiters for which the country once seems to have been famous,
"This story demonstrates just how changing the paradigm in the pharmaceutical industry is essential for it to have the success it has today. For decades, the industry was based not on research, not on the production of knowledge, not on innovation, not on the creation of patents, but on the counterfeiting of patents, it was an illusion that the future was being built. Fortunately this paradigm was abandoned, this is another paradigm."
Costa was referring to his hosts for the day, Bial, which invests in research, innovation and 'the capacity to transform knowledge into economic value.'
"Of course, this requires vision in the future and confidence in the ability to build that future. Investigating the pharmaceutical industry often means betting on research cycles of 15-20 years. Many of these research cycles do not have the success of ever reaching the market or on reaching the market often do not have commercial success. It is, therefore, a high risk exercise, but it is the only one that makes sense," said a well-briefed PM.
The president of Bial, António Portela, said he hoped that the company's research would benefit those suffering from profoundly debilitating diseases.
“Our commitment to innovation and development in Portugal is solid, as evidenced by the investment of nearly five million euros in the doubling of our research and development laboratories,” sais Portela, ending a successful ministerial visit and putting Bial’s past behind him.
