CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

This paper discusses the possibilities for catching up in the biopharmaceutical industry for a developing country. Argentine has developed a minimum threshold of biotechnological knowledge and production expertise since the ?80. Few firms have entered as an imitator into the first wave of recombinant proteins when regulatory and investment barriers to this emerging sector were still low. As incumbent firms adopt the new technological advances and a wagon of imitators enters in the biosimilars markets new barriers emerges challenging Argentine biopharmaceutical industry consolidation. In the light of recent Argentine experience, the main questions this presentation asks are the following: What forms of entry into the biosimilars international market Argentine firms have adopted? What advantages have supported these firms? attempts to enter this market? Which are the challenges to overcome if existing microeconomic experiences are transformed into a sectoral innovation system capable of modifying the pharmaceutical industry?s specialization profile?We put forward the hypothesis that Argentine?s firms have adopted different entry strategies to international market depending on their previous trajectory and the scope and organization of the networks in which they are included. Previous trajectory explains the main advantages of these firms in bioprocessing expertise and international deployment as first generation biosimilars. Although Argentine start-ups and spin offs associated with domestic (or quasi-domestic) pharmaceutical holdings have all the advantages of a S&T infrastructure and access to public funding, increasing scale thresholds and regulatory international barriers weaken the possibility of upgrading their drugs portfolio a to more complex molecules

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