AstraZeneca
AstraZeneca plc is a British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with its headquarters at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus in Cambridge, UK. It has a portfolio of products for major diseases in areas including oncology, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, infection, neuroscience, respiratory, and inflammation.
The company was founded in 1999 through the merger of the Swedish Astra AB and the British Zeneca Group. Zeneca shareholders received 53.5% of the shares, while Astra shareholders received the remaining 46.5%. Its portfolio includes primary and speciality care, coverage for rare diseases, and a robust global presence across various regions. Since the merger it has been among the world's largest pharmaceutical companies and has made numerous corporate acquisitions, including Cambridge Antibody Technology, MedImmune, Spirogen and Definiens. It has its research and development concentrated in three strategic centres: Cambridge, UK; Gothenburg, Sweden; and Gaithersburg, Maryland, US.
AstraZeneca traces its earliest corporate history to 1913, when Astra AB was formed by a large group of doctors and apothecaries in Södertälje. Throughout the twentieth century, it grew into the largest pharmaceutical company in Sweden. Its British counterpart, Zeneca PLC was formed in 1993 when ICI divested its pharmaceuticals businesses; Astra AB and Zeneca PLC merged six years later, with the chosen headquarters in the United Kingdom.
AstraZeneca's primary listing is on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index; it also secondary listings on Nasdaq Stockholm and the American Nasdaq. AstraZeneca has one of the highest market capitalisations of pharmaceutical companies worldwide.
History
was founded in 1913 in Södertälje, Sweden, by 400 doctors and apothecaries. In 1993 the British chemicals company ICI demerged its pharmaceuticals businesses and its agrochemicals and specialities businesses, to form Zeneca Group PLC. Finally, in 1999 Astra and Zeneca Group merged to form AstraZeneca plc, with its headquarters in London. In 1999, AstraZeneca identified a new location for the company's US base, the "Fairfax-plus" site in North Wilmington, Delaware.2000–2006
In September 2002, its drug Iressa was approved in Japan as monotherapy for non-small cell lung cancer. On 3 January 2004 Dr Robert Nolan, a former director of AstraZeneca, formed the management team of ZI Medical.In December 2005, the company acquired KuDOS Pharmaceuticals, a UK biotech company, for £120 million. and entered into an anti-cancer collaboration agreement with Astex. That same year, the firm also became a Diamond Member of the Pennsylvania Bio commerce organisation.
In May 2006, following a collaborative relationship begun in 2004, AstraZeneca acquired Cambridge Antibody Technology for £702 million.
2007–2012: The patent cliff and subsequent acquisitions
In February 2007, AstraZeneca agreed to buy Arrow Therapeutics, a company focused on the discovery and development of anti-viral therapies, for US$150million. AstraZeneca's pipeline, and "patent cliff", was the subject of much speculation in April 2007 leading to pipeline-boosting collaboration and acquisition activities. A few days later AstraZeneca acquired US company MedImmune for about US$15.2 billion to gain flu vaccines and an anti-viral treatment for infants; AstraZeneca subsequently consolidated all of its biologics operations into a dedicated biologics division called MedImmune.In December 2009, AstraZeneca acquired Novexel Corp, an antibiotics discovery company formed in 2004 as a spin-off of the Sanofi-Aventis anti-infectives division. Astra acquired the experimental antibiotic NXL-104 through this acquisition.
In December 2011, AstraZeneca acquired Guangdong BeiKang Pharmaceutical Company, a Chinese generics business.
In February 2012, AstraZeneca and Amgen announced a collaboration on treatments for inflammatory diseases. Then in April 2012, AstraZeneca acquired Ardea Biosciences, another biotechnology company, for $1.26 billion. In June 2012, AstraZeneca and Bristol Myers Squibb announced a two-stage deal for the joint acquisition of the biotechnology company Amylin Pharmaceuticals. It was agreed that Bristol Myers Squibb would acquire Amylin for $5.3 billion in cash and the assumption of $1.7 billion in debt, with AstraZeneca then paying $3.4 billion in cash to Bristol Myers Squibb, and Amylin being folded into an existing diabetes joint venture between AstraZeneca and Bristol Myers Squibb.
2013 restructuring and beyond
2013
In March 2013, AstraZeneca announced plans for a major corporate restructuring, including the closure of its research and development activities at Alderley Park in Cheshire and Loughborough in the UK and at Lund in Sweden, investment of $500million in the construction of a new research and development facility in Cambridge and the concentration of R&D in three locations: Cambridge, Gaithersburg, Maryland, and Gothenburg in Sweden, for research on traditional chemical drugs. AstraZeneca also announced that it would move its corporate headquarters from London to Cambridge in 2016. That announcement included the announcement that it would cut 1,600 jobs; three days later it announced it would cut an additional 2,300 jobs. It also announced that it would focus on three therapeutic areas: Respiratory Inflammation & Autoimmunity, Cardiovascular & Metabolic Disease, and Oncology. In October 2013, AstraZeneca announced it would acquire biotech oncology company Spirogen for around US$440 million.2014
On 19 May 2014, AstraZeneca rejected a "final offer" from Pfizer of £55 per share, which valued the company at £69.4billion. The companies had been meeting since January 2014. If the takeover had proceeded, Pfizer would have become the world's biggest drug maker. The transaction would also have been the biggest foreign takeover of a British company. Many in Britain, including politicians and scientists, had opposed the deal. In July 2014 the company entered into a deal with Almirall to acquire its subsidiary Almirall Sofotec and its lung treatments including the COPD drug, Eklira. The US$2.1 billion deal included an allocation of US$1.2 billion for development in the respiratory franchise, one of AstraZeneca's three target therapeutic areas announced the year before. In August 2014 the company announced it had entered into a three-year collaboration with Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma on diabetic nephropathy.In September 2014, the company joined forces with Eli Lilly in developing and commercialising its candidate BACE inhibitor – AZD3292 – used for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease; this deal was projected to yield up to US$500 million AstraZeneca. In November 2014, the firm's biologics R&D operation, MedImmune, agreed to acquire Definiens for more than US$150 million. It also began a Phase I/II trial collaboration with Pharmacyclics and Janssen Biotech investigating combination treatments. Also in November, AstraZeneca agreed to sell its lipodystrophy treatment business to Aegerion Pharmaceuticals for more than US$325 million. In December, the company received accelerated FDA approval for Olaparib in the treatment of women with advanced ovarian cancer who have a BRCA genetic mutation. A major criterion governing the drugs approval was, on average, its ability to shrink tumours in patients for 7.9 months.
2015
In February 2015, AstraZeneca announced it would acquire the US and Canadian rights to Actavis's branded respiratory drug business for an initial sum of US$600 million. That same month, the company announced a partnership with Orca Pharmaceuticals to develop retinoic acid-related orphan nuclear receptor gamma inhibitors for use in the treatment of several autoimmune diseases, which could generate up to US$122.5 million for Orca. The company also announced its plan to spend US$40 million creating a new subsidiary focused on small molecule anti-infectives – primarily in the research of the gyrase inhibitor, AZD0914, which was then in Phase II testing for the treatment of gonorrhea. The company underwrote twenty out of thirty-two seats of a new Cambridge– Gothenburg service by Sun-Air of Scandinavia.In March, the company stated that it would co-commercialise naloxegol along with Daiichi Sankyo in a deal worth up to US$825 million. In April, the firm announced a number of collaborations worth an estimated US$1.8 billion; first, to develop and commercialise MEDI4736, with Celgene, for use against non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, myelodysplastic syndromes, and multiple myeloma with AstraZeneca receiving US$450 million. The second of two deals is an agreement to study a combination treatment of MEDI4736 and Innate Pharma's Phase II anti-NKG2A antibody IPH2201 for up to US$1.275 billion. The company's MedImmune arm also launched collaborative clinical trials with Juno Therapeutics, investigating combination treatments for cancer; these trials involved combinations of MEDI4736 and one of Juno Therapeutics' CD19 directed chimeric antigen receptor T-cell candidates. In June, the company revealed a partnership with Eolas Therapeutics on the Eolas Orexin-1 Receptor Antagonist program for smoking cessation and other treatments. In July, AstraZeneca announced the sale of its rights to Entocort to Tillotts Pharma for $215 million. In July, Genzyme announced it would acquire the rare cancer drug Caprelsa from AstraZeneca for up to US$300 million.
In August, the company announced it had acquired the global rights to develop and commercialise Heptares Therapeutics' drug candidate HTL-1071, which focuses on blocking the adenosine A2A receptor, in a deal worth up to US$510 million. That same month, the company's MedImmune subsidiary acquired exclusive rights to Inovio Pharmaceuticals' INO-3112 immunotherapy under an agreement which could net more than US$727.5 million for Inovio. INO-3112 targets Human papillomavirus types 16 and 18. In September, Valeant licensed Brodalumab from the company for up to US$445 million. On 6 November, it was reported that AstraZeneca had acquired ZS Pharma for US$2.7 billion. In December, the company announced its intention to acquire the respiratory portfolio of Takeda Pharmaceutical – namely Alvesco and Omnaris – for US$575 million A day later, the company announced it had taken a 55% majority stake in Acerta for US$4 billion; the transaction included commercial rights to Acerta's irreversible oral Bruton's tyrosine kinase inhibitor, acalabrutinib, which under development at that time. In 2015, AstraZenica was the eighth-largest drug company in the world based on sales revenue.