News from Europe's pharmaceutical manufacturing industry coupled with upcoming events, and exclusive articles and interviews from industry experts. WEEKLY
Pharmaceutical Technology&s Annual Manufacturers' Rankings provides perspectives on revenues, product positioning, R&D spending, pharmaceutical manufacturing activity, and capital projects of the major drug companies.
M&A among the top players. Several of the top 50 companies strengthened their positions through mergers and acquisitions in 2006 and 2007. In April
2007, AstraZeneca agreed to buy the biotechnology company MedImmune (Gaithersburg, MD) for $15.6 billion. The deal gives AstraZeneca
two late-stage drug candidates: "Numax," a next-generation product that follows MedImmune's "Synagis," and the refrigerated
formulation of "FluMist." With MedImmune, AstraZeneca increases the percentage of biologics in its pipeline from 7% to 27%
and gains biologics manufacturing capacity. And Schering-Plough agreed to acquire Organon BioSciences, the former pharmaceutical
and animal-health business of Akzo Nobel, for $14.4 billion.
Table V: The top 50 by revenue (rankings 31–50)
These deals follow several high-profile moves in 2006. After agreeing to buy Merck KGgA's stake in Schering AG, Bayer acquired
Schering AG and launched the combined company Bayer Schering Pharma GmbH in December 2006. The deal combines the 15th-ranked
company (Bayer) with the 20th-ranked company (Schering AG). Having failed in its bid to acquire Schering AG, Merck KGaA acquired
a controlling interest in the Swiss biotechnology company Serono A/S and is integrating the new entity, Merck Serono, into
Merck KGaA's ethical pharmaceutical division. Last month, Merck KGaA agreed to sell its generic drug business to Mylan Laboratories
(Canonsburg, OH) for EUR4.9 billion ($6.7 billion). Pfizer sold its consumer healthcare business to Johnson & Johnson for
$16.6 billion, and Altana AG sold Altana Pharma AG to the Danish pharmaceutical company Nycomed.Abbott bought the specialty
pharmaceutical company Kos Pharmaceuticals (Cranbury, NJ), and Forest Laboratories bought the biopharmaceutical company Cerexa
for $480 million in a sale completed in January 2007.
Table VI: New molecular entities approved in 2006 and 2007.
Innovation. On the innovation front, the US Food and Drug Administration's (Rockville, MD) Center for Drug Evaluation and Research approved
a total of 101 new products in 2006, including 97 new drug applications (NDAs) and four biologic license applications (BLAs)
for brand-name therapeutic products. Twenty-two (18 NDAs and 4 BLAs) of these products were new molecular entities (NMEs)
(see Tables VI–VII).
Table VII: Biologic license applications approved in 2006 and 2007.
Pfizer and Merck & Co. were the only companies among the top 50 with two NMEs approved in 2006: Pfizer's anticancer drug "Sutent"
and smoking-cessation drug "Chantix" and Merck's anticancer drug "Zolinza" and the diabetes drug "Januvia." Schering AG, Novartis,
GSK, Amgen, Genentech, and Genzyme were top companies with NMEs approved in 2006 (see Tables VI–VII).
