Word: genentech
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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James Mullen and the biotechnology industry arrived on the scene together by chance in 1980. That year he landed his first job out of college, as a chemical engineer for what is now GlaxoSmithKline, and at about the same time the pioneering biotech firm Genentech sold its first shares to the public. Now Mullen, 44, and the biotech industry are coming of age together--only this time it's no accident. As the CEO of Biogen, Mullen is helping force the issue with his proposal last week to merge his company with IDEC Pharmaceuticals in a $7 billion deal that...
...many of whom prefer the promise of blowout growth to steady profits. Shares of both companies dropped sharply. Who needs another giant drug company pumping out me-too pills, focusing on stuff it already makes and pinching pennies to deliver a steady income? Biotech's allure since the benchmark Genentech IPO 23 years ago has been its promise to deliver wonder drugs that will cure feared ailments like cancer and Alzheimer's. Yet with an exhaustingly long list of failed products and failed companies in its brief past, the industry each year grows closer to losing sway with the moneymen...
Mullen's focus on diverse products, production synergies and profitability at the proposed Biogen IDEC, where he would be CEO, is already part of the culture at top industry players Amgen and Genentech. So he's got a blueprint--and a lot to work with. Biogen's Avonex for multiple sclerosis and IDEC's Rituxan for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma each generate more than $1 billion in annual sales, and both companies are solidly profitable. Yet "the combination will create more value than either could as separate entities," says William Rastetter, CEO of IDEC, who would get the title...
Avastin, made by San-Francisco-based Genentech Inc., is injected into patients and acts as a honing missile that neutralizes a protein that redirects blood flow to tumors...
...best-selling product was long a fertility drug derived from the urine of postmenopausal women, including Italian nuns. Bertarelli's grandfather took it over after the war, and his father Fabio moved it to Geneva in 1977 and began developing new products, including a human-growth hormone. When Genentech came out with a rival based on recombinant-DNA technology, Bertarelli Sr. began funding his own biotech research. That led to the development of a multiple-sclerosis (MS) drug called Rebif, which last year accounted for 39% of Serono's sales...