The US and the EU have imposed sanctions on the supply of chromatographs to Russia.
Western companies refused to supply Russia chromatographic columns – devices needed in the development of new drugs and quality control of already registered drugs. It is difficult to find analogues of chromatographic columns of American and European production, and in Russia they are not produced. This was reported by RosMI.
Checking the quality of drugs in Russia under threat
In the company “Himmed” (distributor of reagents and laboratory equipment) among the major manufacturers of chromatographic columns are named American Agilent Technologies, Waters, Phenomenex, as well as German Merck and Macherey- Nagel.
Senior Sales Manager at Aquachrom (Waters distributor) Alexei Kartashov said the manufacturer had stopped shipping chromatographic columns in early March. Phenomenex did the same in late February.
Agilent has announced that it has decided to close its business in Russia on May 23. Merck declined to comment. In March, the company announced that it was restricting operations in Russia to “core health activities.”
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However, the lack of chromatographic columns does not solve the problem of pharmaceutical manufacturers. Two distributors warn that the problem with chromatographs, which are banned from being imported into Russia as part of EU sanctions, could be much more serious, warn two distributors. For this reason, many pharmaceutical manufacturers will not be able to upgrade this equipment, and will also lose service. In the conservative scenario, the Ministry of Economic Development expects Russia's GDP to fall by 12.4% in 2022.
