Hovione is a Portuguese multinational company that produces active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and conducts drug product intermediates development and compliant

manufacture Manufacturing is the creation or Production (economics), production of goods with the help of equipment, Work (human activity), labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary secto ...

. It is a Contract Development and Manufacturing Company (CDMO) dedicated to helping pharmaceutical customers bring new and off-patent drugs to market. With sites in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of th ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George's Channel. Ireland is the s ...

and

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

, it provides products and services to the pharmaceutical industry, including separate and integrated API, pre-formulated compounds, particle engineering, formulation development and

manufacturing Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to ...

. It also supports highly potent compounds and proprietary product development and licensing for drug products. It is also present in the

inhalation Inhalation (or Inspiration) happens when air or other gases enter the lungs. Inhalation of air Inhalation of air, as part of the cycle of breathing, is a vital process for all human life. The process is autonomic (though there are exceptions ...

area.

History

Hovione was established in Portugal in 1959 by Ivan Villax with his wife, Diane Villax, and two other Hungarian refugees: Nicholas de Horthy and Andrew Onody, the first two letters of the three founders’ names: HO, VI and ON were used to create the name Hovione. Hovione continues to be a privately held company with 5 plants - in

(1969),

Macao Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a po ...

(1986),

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delawa ...

(2001) expanded in 2016, Taizhou in mainland

(2008) and

Cork Cork or CORK may refer to: Materials * Cork (material), an impermeable buoyant plant product ** Cork (plug), a cylindrical or conical object used to seal a container ***Wine cork Places Ireland * Cork (city) ** Metropolitan Cork, also known as G ...

, Ireland (2009) - have a total reactor capacity of 1300 m³ and 1100 people worldwide. Since Hovione started operations in 1959, the company has patented more than 100 innovative chemical processes and produced industrially over 45 different APIs. All Hovione sites have been successfully inspected either by FDA,

European Medicines Agency The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is an agency of the European Union (EU) in charge of the evaluation and supervision of medicinal products. Prior to 2004, it was known as the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products or Eur ...

or the PMDA Japanese agency. Hovione is a major source of semi-synthetic

tetracycline Tetracycline, sold under various brand names, is an oral antibiotic in the tetracyclines family of medications, used to treat a number of infections, including acne, cholera, brucellosis, plague, malaria, and syphilis. Common side effects in ...

s and

corticosteroids Corticosteroids are a class of steroid hormones that are produced in the adrenal cortex of vertebrates, as well as the synthetic analogues of these hormones. Two main classes of corticosteroids, glucocorticoids and mineralocorticoids, are invol ...

, and is the largest independent supplier of

contrast agents A contrast agent (or contrast medium) is a substance used to increase the contrast of structures or fluids within the body in medical imaging. Contrast agents absorb or alter external electromagnetism or ultrasound, which is different from radioph ...

– these three families of compounds make up most of its

generic product Generic brands of consumer products (often supermarket goods) are distinguished by the absence of a brand name, instead identified solely by product characteristics and identified by plain, usually black-and-white packaging. Generally they imitat ...

portfolio. The other half of the business focuses on exclusive projects: * Development and manufacture of innovator APIs * Particle Engineering: manipulations of physical properties of APIs, polymeric encapsulation * Development of formulations for pulmonary delivery

Research and development

Hovione has two R&D centers with a team of over 270

scientists A scientist is a person who conducts scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosophi ...

, one in

- Loures and another one in its facilities in

. Hovione has international partnerships, including with

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

and MIT. In 2016, 7 PhDs were simultaneously running and it has launched a scientific program named "9oW", which challenges scientific and academic communities to help overcoming technological challenges. Also, Hovione is already the largest private employer of doctorates in Portugal (57 doctorates in Loures).

Strategy

Hovione was always present in the pharmaceutical industry offering products and services related to the development and manufacture of either a

new chemical entity A new chemical entity (NCE) is, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a novel, small, chemical molecule drug that is undergoing clinical trials or has received a first approval (not a new use) by the FDA in any other application submi ...

(NCE) for an exclusive contract

partner or an existing API for an off-patent product. Today, it is an integrated

solution provider Solution may refer to: * Solution (chemistry), a mixture where one substance is dissolved in another * Solution (equation), in mathematics ** Numerical solution, in numerical analysis, approximate solutions within specified error bounds * Solut ...

, from process chemistry to

particle engineering In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, fro ...

to formulation, from very small scale to full commercial capacity and from preclinical to market. In the area of

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, scien ...

, it has capabilities in spray drying (also for potent drugs), spray congealing, fluidized spray drying, aseptic spray drying, jet milling, controlled

crystallization Crystallization is the process by which solid forms, where the atoms or molecules are highly organized into a structure known as a crystal. Some ways by which crystals form are precipitating from a solution, freezing, or more rarely deposi ...

, microfluidization, continuous manufacturing, continuous tableting. And methodologies Quality by Design, process analytical technology (PAT), britest, lean, scale-up science, modeling. Hovione invested about $100 million in 2017 and plans to spend as much again this year and next. The plan over the next three years is to continue investing, especially in Portugal, where the firm will add 165 m³ of chemical synthesis capacity, a spray-dryer building, and a 1,200-m² analytical lab.

References

External links

Hovione Website
{{Authority control Pharmaceutical companies of Portugal Pharmaceutical companies established in 1959 1959 establishments in Portugal Portuguese brands