New Life Science Park to be created in St Petersburg

St. Petersburg Technopark will receive a grant under the cooperation program “South-Eastern Finland – Russia 2014 – 2020” for the implementation of the Life Science Park project.

According to the head of the Regional Engineering Centre for microreactor synthesis of active pharmaceutical ingredients (REC API), Elena Petrova, the University of Kotka will be a participant from the Finnish side.

The total amount of the grant is €3.5 million. It is assumed that Russia will receive €2.3 million euro and the Finnish side will accept the rest.

According to Zakhar Golant, the Chairman of the Board of the “Medical and Pharmaceutical Projects Union. XXI Century”, the Life Science Park will be a 500 – 600 sq m laboratory complex located on the territory of St. Petersburg Technopark. Small companies will be able to do research and undergo quality control for export to international markets. Accordingly, Finnish pharmaceutical startups will be able to receive certification assistance in order to start working in Russia.

Dmitry Chagin, Director of the Medical and Pharmaceutical Projects Union, added:

“Speaking about such a regional engineering center, especially in terms of the methodology for the development of active pharmaceutical substances, there is nothing like this in Russia at all. It could be foreign companies that transfer their technologies here, these will be orders from our Finnish partners.”

The European Commission has already approved the project, by the end of the year the budget will be refined, in the first quarter of 2019, an agreement will be signed between the Russian and Finnish parties. Life Science Park itself will start operating at the end of 2019.