Selvita

Selvita’s new investment

Selvita is one of Europe’s largest biotech companies, actively discovering and developing drugs used in oncology. It also provides laboratory research and development services commissioned by pharmaceutical, biotech, and chemical companies from all over the world. It uses its daughter company, Ardigen, to provide IT solutions based on AI methods in precision medicine. Currently, Selvita employs nearly 600 people, a third of whom hold doctorates. In cancer research, the company cooperates among others with recognised foreign companies, to mention Merck Healthcare and Menarini Group as well as The Leukaemia and Lymphoma Society foundation. Since 2014 Selvita has been listed at the Warsaw Stock Exchange, and in 2017 was included in the sWIG80 index.

Since the incorporation, the company has had its headquarters and the main laboratory facilities in Kraków, while the second laboratory operated in Poznań. In the earliest days of its operation Selvita leased laboratory space from the Faculty of Biology, Biotechnology, and Biochemistry of the Jagiellonian University at ul. Gronostajowa 7. Developing, the company moved to the laboratories of the Life Science Park of the Jagiellonian Innovation Centre, where its laboratories and offices currently occupy over 4,000m² (43,000 ft²).

Setting up Selvita in 2007, Paweł Przewięźlikowski and Bogusław Sieczkowski made a handful of fundamental assumptions: to be in Kraków, to work with smart people, and generate not only long-term profit but also benefits for the community. In the 12 years of its development, Selvita has developed quickly and dynamically, reaching numerous scientific and corporate milestones that have made a mark on the whole Polish biotech sector.

Discussing breakthrough moments in the development of the company, it is impossible to gloss over the key partnership contracts on development of molecules with clinical potential in oncology with such partners as Merck Serono and H3 Biomedicine. The significant development of the company’s service segment went hand in hand with the development of its innovation segment. In June 2014 this resulted in Selvita obtaining a permit to operate on the premises of the Kraków special economic zone.

Not much later, in 2015, the company made a significant expansion in Western markets, as it opened offices in the world’s key biotech centres: in Boston Area and in San Francisco Area in the US and in Cambridge, UK. In September 2016 Selvita announced the plan to build its own Research and Development Centre for Innovative Drugs in Kraków. The plot where the development will take place lies several hundred metres away from Selvita laboratories, in the vicinity of the Kraków Technology Park, on the premises of the Kraków special economic zone, in ul. Podole. The development will include a laboratory and office complex comprising three buildings, with a total floor space of 14,000m² (150,000 ft²), which will provide an employment opportunity for around 1000 people. The development will be staged, and in the first stage, Selvita intends to open a modern building with floor space of around 5,000 m² (54,000 ft²), which will have been finished by the end of 2019.

In March 2019 Selvita announced a plan to split into two distinct companies. One will focus on the development of proprietary projects in small molecules with clinical oncological potential, and the latter will provide laboratory research and development services for clients. Both the companies will be listed at the Warsaw Stock Exchange. The split will be completed in the fourth quarter of 2019, which will coincide with transferring the new innovative company to the newly developed laboratories.

“For 10 years we have stalwartly maintained that Kraków is ideal to become the Polish centre of world-class innovative research and development in pharmacy and biotechnology” – said President of Selvita SA, Paweł Przewięźlikowski – “The capital, the scientific environment, and history of drug research in Kraków build up the potential of the city we work in. If you combine it with professional infrastructure and plentiful assistance for entrepreneurs, for example an opportunity to have your taxes reduced, and with the supportive business environment, we believe that Kraków offers an opportunity to catch up with the world’s spearhead of the biotech sector”.