Research and Production

An ecosystem for health: the vision of Gsk Italia

'Collaboration, knowledge and shared responsibility': new CEO Antonino Biroccio talks about the Italian way to sustainable innovation in pharmaceuticals

by Federico Mereta

3 November 2025

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Over 4,200 employees, equal to around 6% of the entire pharmaceutical sector's staff. An industrial presence with two production sites (Parma and Rosia) and as many research centres, with a total turnover of around 1.6 billion Euro, 30% of which comes from exports (around 480 million Euro), mainly driven by production. And 324 million Euro are invested in one year (equal to 20% of turnover), almost 8% of the total investment in research and production in Pharma in Italy.

These are just some of the figures that characterise the reality of Gsk in Italy. The company, after Fabio Landazabal, destined to become head of Latin America for the group, now has a new general manager, who will lead the structure from the Verona headquarters. His name is Antonino Biroccio. He was born in Reggio Calabria in 1973, graduated in Pharmaceutical Chemistry with a doctorate in Genetics and Molecular Biology, and after a professional career that also took him to other companies, he is the new president and managing director of Gsk spa.

Innovation that travels fast

"Sustainability means the future': this is how Biroccio's commitment can be described: to continue on the road that leads to innovation, continuing to grow the company, which has been present in Italy since the beginning of the last century and which in its growth has become a full-cycle pharma multinational. In a sustainable way: 'We must focus on tomorrow: the goals we have achieved as a company and as a country (Italy is the second European producer of pharmaceuticals after Germany) risk being nullified if we do not grasp the transformation taking place.

The watchword guiding the manager's efforts is certainly innovation. But it must be 'real' innovation, which 'once introduced, improves health and living conditions, economic prosperity, and generates attractiveness and competitiveness, with an eye to the short cost cover, particularly health costs put under severe pressure by a progressively ageing population with greater health needs'.

The important thing is to know that you have to move within an ecosystem of interactions with all the players in the health sector, with shared objectives and common priorities for development, organisation and access. "My commitment is to collaborate with doctors, patients, institutions and associations to advance only one type of innovation, the real one that reaches the patient's bedside, that decreases social costs, that attracts foreign investment to our country, that increases our exports, and the one to which we all want to have access, as quickly as the other European citizens.

Strategies for Growth

How should a company move in such a complex landscape, understanding its own limitations but at the same time proposing itself as a driver of change? According to Biroccio, the answer lies in the ability to create moments of social and economic reflection, to share experiences and analyses, and to make available the investments already made or being made to make vaccines and drugs available to our country. And sharing knowledge and expertise means offering the tools for health and social assessments that help the country system.

"The recommended vaccinations for frail adults, if properly organised throughout the country, would bring savings of more than EUR 10 billion, the equivalent of a finance bill," Biroccio proposes as an example. "We have one of the oldest populations in Europe, which needs health and contributes to the economy, which still works, which mobilises a quarter of the GDP and consumption of Italian families. A silver economy that also looks to the sustainability of our health system for a future of hope, where medical needs are urgent, as in oncology.

Value Production

High-level research and production, with Italy at the centre of the world chessboard, are the key words to outline the group's presence in Italy. In addition to the research centres in Siena on vaccines and production at the Rosia plant, Parma produces new drugs for clinical trials, latest-generation antivirals, and monoclonal antibodies in immunology, respiratory diseases and oncology.

«Con gli anticorpi monoclonali ci siamo prefissati obiettivi ambiziosi, nelle malattie reumatiche e in quelle respiratorie mediate dall’interleuchina 5 ma soprattutto in oncologia – commenta Biroccio - . E Parma è al centro di tutto questo con la sua piattaforma tecnologica e in particolare quella per la produzione dei cosiddetti Adc, fra i farmaci più promettenti per i tumori più difficili da trattare». La sigla sta per anticorpi monoclonali coniugati con un citotossico (Adc). E rappresenta una piattaforma tecnologica guardata con interesse per l’efficacia terapeutica, ma è anche una grande sfida tecnologica produttiva riuscire ad abbinare in sicurezza e qualità farmaci così diversi per arrivare a un effetto terapeutico maggiore della loro semplice somma, magari in aree come quelle dell’oncologia polmonare e della prostata.

So, a journey between the present and the future? It would seem so. "Gsk's Adc drug for multiple myeloma is produced in Parma for the whole world," Biroccio emphasised, "it has already been approved by Ema and is awaiting registration in Italy, while on 23 October it was given the go-ahead by the US FDA. But that's not all because on 27 October we signed an agreement with Syndivia for another Adc candidate that would strengthen our line of Adc candidates in development for prostate cancer, and the following day we obtained Odd (orphan drug designation) in Europe for another of our Adc candidates in the treatment of microcitoma