# Did you know that some of the world’s most important medicines come from Europe?

> Europe's leading pharmaceutical companies like Roche, Novartis, Sanofi, Novo Nordisk and BioNTech, driving global innovation in medicine and vaccines.

European Medicine: Top Pharmaceutical Companies | Euronomy

![Oz](https://euronomy.eu/media/d2ocotd5/oz.webp)

Bayer synthesised Aspirin in 1897, and more than a century later BioNTech's Mainz laboratory produced the mRNA behind the first Covid-19 vaccine. European pharma still sits at the front of medical science: Switzerland's Roche and Novartis, France's Sanofi, and Denmark's Novo Nordisk, whose Wegovy and Ozempic made it for a time Europe's most valuable listed company.

Together these firms employ hundreds of thousands across the continent and pour billions into research, even as patent cliffs, biosimilars and rivals like Eli Lilly bite into their bestsellers. Here are the companies keeping Europe at the cutting edge of medicine.