Click here
A pioneer in development of drugs within everyone
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is a biotechnologist,
born in India in 1953.
Kiran is the founder and chairperson of Biocon,
a pioneering company in the field of biotechnology and the largest manufacturer of insulin
in Asia.
Her fascination for science, and in particular for
chemistry and biology, began already in
school. She opened her own biotechnology
company in the 70s, when she was only twenty-five years old.
In July 2016, she launched a disposable insulin
pen in Japan with Fujifilm Pharma. In August,
European regulators accepted for evaluation a
set of biosimilar drugs for treating certain types
of cancer. These drugs of biotechnological
origin were developed jointly with the pharmaceutical company Mylan.
Her work is focuses on developing insulins and
therapies with insulin that are truly affordable
for diabetics around the world. “We are also
developing pharmaceutical products against
cancer so that they are affordable.
This is making it possible for a great
number of patients from countries with
developing economies to access these
medications,” explains Kiran.
Her work is inspired by the fact that, as she
says, there are drugs which are absolutely
critical to saving lives but they are also absolutely unaffordable for thousands of patients in
the developing world.