Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN, SEHK: 4332) is an international biotechnology company headquartered in the Newbury Park section of Thousand Oaks, California. Located in the Conejo Valley, it is one of the top corporations in the Tech Coast area. 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 on the market) were the two most successful biopharmaceutical products at the time of their respective releases.

BusinessWeek ranked Amgen fourth on the S&P 500 for being the most "future-oriented" of those five hundred corporations.^[2] 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 also a member of the Pennsylvania Bio commerce organization.^[3]

With plans to expand into a new campus under construction in South San Francisco, Amgen abruptly halted construction on the plans and instead put the 365,000 square feet (33,900 m²) of new space on the sublease market.^[4]

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 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.
• 2006 - Abgenix, Inc.
• 2006 - Avidia, Inc.
• 2007 - Ilypsa, Inc.
• 2007 - Alantos Pharmaceuticals Holdings, Inc.

Products

As of September 27, 2006, Amgen had nine 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)
• Vectibix (Panitumumab) (for colon cancer)
• Sensipar (Cinacalcet) (for Secondary hyperparathyroidism, a mineral metabolism complication common in patients with kidney failure)

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 many of these candidate drugs will not emerge as marketed approved drugs.

References

See also

• Kirin-Amgen v Hoechst Marion Roussel, a UK patent case decided by the House of Lords