Many of my posts today have been about pharma and biotech firms cutting back on their R&D expenditures as a way of changing the way they do business and managing profitability in the wake of flagging pipelines. What if your pipeline is in healthier condition? What then?
Well Amgen's answer is increase spending by 26%. Why? It now has 10 programs in phase III development and the big biotech is pushing to get them to market. Key targets include the cancer drug ganitumab and AMG 386, according to their website.
Of course, strong top line sales growth didn't hurt at all -- with Prolia and Xgeva (both denosumab) growng strong, joined by increased sales of Neulasta, Neupogen and Enbrel -- overall sales were up 4.1% to 3.96 billion for the quarter. See LA Times and Fierce Biotech.
Posted by Bruce Lehr July 29th 2011.
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