AIFD attended 12th AFMC-AIMECS Symposium
12.09.2019
Association of Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies (AIFD) attended 12th Asian Federation for Medicinal Chemistry (AFMC) International Medicinal Chemistry Symposium (AFMC-AIMECS 2019). Secretary General of AIFD Dr. Ümit Dereli made a speech at the opening ceremony of the event, which took place in Elite World Europe Hotel on September 8-11. Dr. Ümit Dereli commented: “Pharma industry is in an endless race of innovation, of science… Today innovation is no longer coming out from intra-company R&D departments of big-pharma corporations, as we used to observe. Today, innovation in basic research is largely coming out of startups. According to US FDA data, 70 percent of the medicines approved by the FDA in 2018 are invented by startups. This whole change marks a very unique time when Turkey can be more easily involved, integrated with the most value generating steps of pharmaceutical value chains ever, through offering new ideas. In this new ecosystem, symbiosis between startups and global pharmaceutical corporations is inevitable. Startups need to collaborate with big-pharma to grow and big-pharma needs startups to ensure upcoming innovation and sustained competitiveness. At AIFD, we contribute to this ecosystem through a unique accelerator program with an intention to facilitate these collaborations.
We are proud to carry out BIO Startup Program, at a time when the basic research in pharmaceutical R&D is almost carried out by startups in the world.”