History

Synthon was founded in 1991, and within two years our creative vision and passion for making healthcare more affordable led to the development of our first product.

This was dobutamine, a sympathomimetic drug used in the treatment of heart failure and cardiogenic shock. This success quickly led to surprisingly rapid international growth. Synthon grew over the course of its first decade from a small Nijmegen-based local company employing less than a hundred people into a fully-fledged international company with laboratories, offices and production plants all around the world.

A headcount of 1,400 highly educated people around the world, high profitability, re-investment as well as a sound financial foundation are the core ingredients to successfully delivering what we do best: affordable medicines to those in need. This would not have been possible without the right combination of technical expertise, business discipline and entrepreneurial capability at every level of management.

The strategic steps we have taken over the last 20 years have successfully positioned the company as we move towards achieving our goal of becoming a fully-fledged specialty pharmaceuticals provider. 

Our timeline 

1991
Thirty-nine year old Dutch chemist, Jacques Lemmens, founds Synthon in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Lemmens had formally been a researcher at Nijmegen´s Radboud University.

1993
The first generic product, dobutamine, a sympathomimetic drug used in the treatment of heart failure and cardiogenic shock, is launched and quickly becomes a commercial success. This lays the foundation for further growth.

1994
New R&D facilities open in Prague, Czech Republic. Prague houses R&D facilities, while Blansko will later manufacture active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs).

1997
New sales office opens in North Carolina, USA for marketing, registration and packaging activities for the North American market.

1998
A drug product manufacturing facility is acquired in Barcelona, Spain. Today, totally refitted and expanded, Synthon Hispania is home to extensive R&D facilities and manufactures solid oral dosage finished drug products. The year also sees the opening of a new sales office in Australia.

2000
An API production facility opens in Blansko, Czech Republic.

2001
A second API manufacturing facility is acquired in San Lorenzo, Argentina. Marketing and sales to the local health care market are taking place through Driburg in Buenos Aires.   

2003
A generic version of the statin simvastatin, which is designed to control high cholesterol, is launched. By 2010, the product accounts for around 10 percent of Synthon´s total sales.

2007
Laboratorios Rider is acquired in Chile. The laboratory develops, manufactures and distributes its own health care product portfolio for the Chilean market and also promotes and distributes products from our global portfolio. The year also sees the start of Synthon’s biopharmaceutical activities.

2009 
An R&D and manufacturing facility opens in the Czech Republic. This is followed by the opening of our Moscow office.

2010
Nafar Laboratorios in Mexico is acquired. The company develops, manufactures and distributes generic drugs to the Mexican market. Other important milestones are the opening of offices in Jordan and South Korea.

2011
A new state-of-the-art biotechnology building containing biopharmaceutical laboratories opens at Synthon headquarters in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. The world-class Nijmegen facilities are the main hub for small molecule and biopharmaceutical R&D, intellectual property, marketing and sales, and support services.

The acquisition of Syntarga and its proprietary antibody-drug conjugate technology in the same year is a significant strengthening of Synthon´s biopharmaceutical capabilities and creates an enabling technology platform to support further growth. 

2012
Synthon acquires the LEX System^SM (now called: SYNLEX™) from Biolex Pharmaceuticals. SYNLEX™ is a proprietary biologics manufacturing platform that uses cultures of Lemna minor (duckweed) to express high quality pharmaceutical proteins. This unique next generation manufacturing platform for biosimilar, biobetter or novel antibodies has proven scalability and high production capacity, while addressing the need for control, containment and cost reduction.

In our key emerging regions, we expanded our operations capabilities to support accelerated growth. Full production started at our new GMP-certified drug product manufacturing plant in Chile with the ability to serve global markets. Furthermore, we inaugurated our Argentina-based pilot plant which will play an important role in the development and small scale manufacturing of strategic products and complements our existing commercial production facility in San Lorenzo.