Founded in 1986, PharmaMar, a wholly owned member of the Zeltia Group, is a biopharmaceutical company determined to advance cancer treatment through discovering, developing, producing, and marketing innovative drugs of marine origin.
 
The company has a unique marine organism library containing over 85,000 specimens. PharmaMar’s Research, Development, and Innovation Department has discovered 700 new chemical entities and identified 30 new families of compounds. As a result of this work, PharmaMar has over 1800 patents that either have been awarded or are in the processing stage.
 
Yondelis^®, developed by PharmaMar and initially approved by the European Commission in 2007 for the treatment of Soft Tissue Sarcoma, and in 2009 for the treatment of Relapsed Ovarian Cancer, is the first in a new generation of antitumour drugs developed from marine compounds. Since that time, Yondelis^® has been approved in 21 countries of Asia, Central and South America, as well as in Switzerland and Russia. PharmaMar’s other pipeline compounds, Aplidin^®, Irvalec^®, Zalypsis^®, and PM01183 are in different phases of clinical evaluation and are following in its steps. The company's product portfolio also has additional molecules in advanced preclinical development.
 
PharmaMar ranks among the leading Spanish pharmaceutical companies that invest heavily in Research, Development, and Innovation. During its first 20 years it has devoted 450 million euros to R+D+i.

 

At its head office in Colmenar Viejo (Madrid), the company has a workforce of 300 highly qualified professionals who specialize in the pharmaceutical sector. Seventy percent are university graduates and, of these, 60% are doctors. PharmaMar’s employees are part of a global network of excellence, in which over 60 research centres and universities worldwide collaborate to find new discoveries in marine biology, chemistry, and cancer biology.