From Wedel to the world

A focus on patient well-being - Savvy pharmaceutical research - Progress for long-term patients

Established as a small start-up in 1970, Medac Gesellschaft für klinische Spezialpräparate mbH (the ‘Medac Company for Special Clinical Preparations) in Wedel has blossomed into a global player in the pharmaceuticals industry. The company employs a workforce of roughly 1,200 people just in the county of Pinneberg alone. Its medicines are available in more than 90 different countries. From the outset, Medac has especially focused on oncology, haematology and autoimmune diseases, particularly rheumatism.

‘If you were to ask a group of everyday consumers, hardly any of them will have heard of us,’ laughs Heiner Will, Managing Director of Medac, ‘This is mainly due to us not making any medicines that people know from TV advertisements. Instead, we specialise in highly ethical medicine.’ There are about 50 active ingredients that are used in the medicines from this Schleswig-Holstein pharmaceuticals company and they can be used for different illnesses based on their dosage, mode of administration and regulatory approval. The company maintains a head office in Wedel as well as a large logistics centre in Tornesch, two production sites in Dessau-Rosslau and Brünn; and offices throughout Europe. It also has representation offices in Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine as well as a large number of distribution partners.

Medac works closely with a variety of university and non-university research institutions for research and development. ‘Not only do we put new medicines on the market, but we also enhance existing ones in order to improve them for patients,’ Will says. These patients are a clear focus for him and his colleagues, which is also why they concentrate on their products’ user-friendliness. ‘For long-term treatments in particular, it is vitally important that sick people do not have any troubles with their medical products. For this reason, we have developed an autoinjector for rheumatism patients. They can use it to inject their medicine themselves easily and straightforwardly.’ Medac laid the foundation for this revolution in rheumatism treatment by developing and producing a liquid form of the methotrexate ingredient for self-administration. ‘Previously, patients were given the treatment almost exclusively in tablet form. Through our research, we were able to prove that it has a significantly better effect as a liquid drug while also producing fewer side effects,’ the managing director explains. The latest innovation in treatment is a drug for stem cell therapy preparation. ‘The immune system needs to be completely shut down before starting stem cell therapy, and that is a highly critical procedure. Our new medicine is significantly less toxic than comparable products, which leads to a considerably higher survival rate.’