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What's Driving Amgen?

Despite its CEO's professed distaste for biotech acquisitions, Amgen was willing to pay $16 billion for Immunex, in a bold move that ensures its growth momentum even as its key product, EPO, ages and its newly launched replacement faces uncertain prospects. Immunex makes a blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis drug, Enbrel, which it forecast will have sales of $4 billion by 2005. Amgen thinks it can drive Enbrel sales further, even though it is projecting a smaller market of $3 billion for the drug by 2005.

At the October 2001 annual biotech CEO conference in Laguna Niguel, Amgen Inc. CEO Kevin Sharer told the crowd that biotech acquisitions were, in general, not a particularly good idea. Executives who were there say Sharer argued then that biotechs could fare better by marketing their own products, rather than spending the energy buying and integrating companies.

At the time, Amgen had just received approval for Aranesp, the second-generation version of the red blood-cell stimulating protein erythropoeitin,...

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