Amgen

Amgen Inc. (, ) is an international biotechnology company headquartered in Thousand Oaks, California. Amgen is the largest independent biotech firm, with approx. 15,000 staff members in 2005. Its products include EPOGEN, ARANESP, ENBREL, Kineret, Neulasta, NEUPOGEN, and Sensipar / Mimpara. EPOGEN and NEUPOGEN (the company's first products to hit the market) were the two most successful biopharmaceutical products at the time of their respective releases.

BusinessWeek (as cited in "References") ranked Amgen fourth on the S&P 500 for being the most "future-oriented" of those five hundred corporations. BusinessWeek ostensibly calculated the ratio of research and development spending, combined with capital spending, to total outlays; Amgen had the fourth highest ratio, at 506:1000. Amgen is the largest employer in Thousand Oaks and second only to the United States Navy in terms of number of people employed in Ventura County.

Amgen is a member of the Pennsylvania Bio commerce organization, though it appears not to maintain a facility in Pennsylvania (United States).

History

The word AMGen is a portmanteau of the company's original name, Applied Molecular Genetics, which became the official name of the company in 1983 (three years after its incorporation and coincident with its initial public offering). The company's first chief executive officer, from 1980, was George B. Rathmann, followed by Gordon M. Binder in 1988, followed by Kevin W. Sharer in 2000. The company has made at least five major corporate acquisitions.

Acquisition History

1994 - Synergen, Inc.
2000 - Kinetix Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
2002 - Immunex Corporation
2004 - Tularik, Inc.
2005 - Abgenix, Inc.

Products

As of February 3, 2005, Amgen had eight approved drugs for fourteen conditions (conditions lists are highly generalized; see each article for more detail):

Aranesp (darbepoetin alfa) (for anemia)
Enbrel (Etanercept) (for various forms of arthritis)
Epogen (Epoetin) (for anemia)
Kepivance (Palifermin) (for oral mucositis)
Kineret (Anakinra) (for rheumatoid arthritis)
Neupogen (Granulocyte-Colony Stimulating Factor or "Filgrastim") (for neutropenia)
Neulasta (PEG Granulocyte-Colony Stimulating Factor or "PEG-Filgrastim") (for neutropenia)
Sensipar (Cinacalcet) (for conditions related to parathyroid gland function)

In other drug discovery phases (Phases I, II, III and in preclinical development), the company has twenty-three pharmacologic agents for twenty-eight conditions; nineteen of the candidates are not currently approved for any indication. Precedent within the pharmaceutical industry suggests that most of these candidate drugs will not emerge as marketed approved drugs.

References

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Company Profiles

Amgen Inc. Company Profile at Yahoo!
Amgen Inc. Company Profile at MSN MoneyCentral.
Amgen Inc. Company Profile at ClearStation.
Amgen Inc. Company Profile at MarketWatch.
Amgen Inc. Company Profile at Google Finance.