Monday, December 18, 2006

AstraZeneca - concentrate, concentrate

The chief executive of AstraZeneca has said that the company intends to reduce the number of diseases for which it develops new drugs and concentrate on acquisitions and licensing deals in its core areas.

David Brennan told the Financial Times of the firm's intention to withdraw from hypertension, functional gastro-intestinal disorders, inflammatory bowel diseases, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, addiction, insomnia and stroke.

From now on, it will concentrate on diabetes and obesity, infection, inhalation projects, analgesia and oncology.

"Our primary focus is in areas where we have existing therapies... (and) are most likely to get a hit. Right now we are much more focused on areas where we are strong, rather than in diversity," Mr Brennan said.

His comments seem to rule out any future bid for Shire, as had been rumoured, since it specialises in attention deficit disorder, gastro-intestinal and renal diseases and human genetic therapies.

Mr Brennan also told the FT any further cost-cutting to maintain operating margins at 30% would not come from reduced R&D investment, which he wants to increase to 18-20% of sales by 2010.

Insider's view: all those not working in the "core areas" please form and orderly line near the "out" door!

Source: PharmaTimes

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Basically AstraZeneca will use the same strategy that got them into the mess to try and get them out. They will advertise the same old drugs more heavily, maybe test them for a few more uses, and possibly buy out some small biotech firms.

Joseph Santoli said...

FYI: www.pfizerclassaction.com for current and former Pfizer P.R. employees