Amgen

Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN) is an international biotechnology company headquartered in Thousand Oaks, California. In fact, Amgen claims it is the largest independent biotech firm, with 12,800 staff members in 2003. Its products include Aranesp, ENBREL, EPOGEN, Kineret, Neulasta, NEUPOGEN, and Sensipar. EPOGEN and NEUPOGEN (the company's first products to hit the market) were the two most successful biopharmaceutical products at the time of their respective releases. BusinessWeek (as cited in "References") ranked Amgen fourth on the S&P 500 for being the most "future-oriented" of those five hundred corporations. BusinessWeek ostensibly calculated the ratio of research and development spending, combined with capital spending, to total outlays. (Amgen had the fourth highest ratio, at 506:1000). Amgen is the largest employer in Thousand Oaks and second only to the United States Navy in terms of number of people employed in Ventura County.

Trivia: the word AMGen is a derivation of the company's original name, Applied Molecular Genetics.

References

• "The Search for Tomorrow", an article by Peter Coy on page 216 of the 11 October 2004 issue of BusinessWeek

See also

• Yahoo! – Amgen Inc. Company Profile
• Amgen Homepage