“In late August, a drug manufacturing contract was signed with Bayer. Both a framework agreement covering the company's all medicines and the entire production chain, as well as an agreement on Avelox were signed. This is the last-generation antibiotic to which there are no resistant strains yet. The need for Avelox is very high. It is widely used in the tuberculosis treatment. This is a very good drug of the medium price category; it will be sold all over the country. It has very few side effects, and doctors like to prescribe it to their patients,” said Alexander Petrov.

It should be noted that the first lot of the Russian antibiotic produced according to German standards will be transferred to a warehouse for testing; in six months, Medsintez will produce a commercial lot of Aveloks. That said, this modern drug will appear on the Russian market as soon as in 2014. The possibility to export this domestic antibiotic abroad should not be excluded. First, the agreement with Bayer allows this; second, the Russian Aveloks will be no different that the European one.

By the way, the Sverdlovsk plant successfully withstood a two-year quality-standard audit; the conclusion was: Medsintez is ready to produce drugs in compliance with high Bayer requirements.

“In terms of quality, the Germans are very scrupulous. It was like in school: we held large production meetings, since we had never produced antibiotics before. We had much to learn to avoid price growth but keep the quality,” Alexander Petrov shared his impressions.

Remember that the core agreement between Medsintez and Bayer was signed in November 2012. The Novouralsk plant is the only domestic partner of this  German company in medicine production. Currently, Bayer's foreign and Russian staff train the plant's specialists and pass know-how and modern technologies to produce European-level medicines.

“At the first stage, they train us and place an order for certain products; at the second stage, joint development of drugs and new molecules as well as their promotion on the Russian market are planned. These will be antibiotics, contrast media and neurological substances,” revealed Alexander Petrov the cooperation prospects.

Now, Medsintez and Bayer discuss further cooperation, already as part of the joint production of contrast media. These substances are used in heart diagnostics and cancer detection. The conceptual project of a contrast-media manufacturing workshop is ready; now, the production volumes are to be agreed with the German party.

“We are in negotiations with the Germans to determine the amount of drugs sold on the market. The workshop's capacity and, accordingly, financing and investments will depend on it. We have already prepared a conceptual project, but with a very high production capacity, which allows to provide half of the world with Russian contrast media. Now, the project is being aligned with the demand on the Russian and CIS markets,” said Alexander Petrov.

The consumption of contrast media continues to grow as Russian clinics carry on purchasing modern diagnostic equipment as part of healthcare modernization. It doesn’t work on its own; supplies are required, including X-Rays contrast media.