Genesis stakeholder aims to join giants

By SIMON COLLINS

The world's biggest biotech company, Amgen, wants to step up and join the club of "big pharma".

Amgen, which owns 6.2 per cent of Auckland company Genesis Research & Development, has grown from just 20 people in 1981 to 9250 staff. It had sales last year of US$4 billion ($8 billion).

But it is still well short of the world's top pharmaceutical companies such as Merck (69,000 staff) or GlaxoSmithKline (100,000).

Amgen vice-president Dr Dennis Fenton told the Pacific Rim Biotechnology Conference in Auckland yesterday that the company wanted to transform itself into a "human therapeutics company".

"In 1999, we were the biggest biotech company in the world," he said. "We were so happy - we were bigger than Genentech [formerly the biggest biotech firm].

"But we said, we have to compare ourselves to Pfizer and Merck and Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson.

"We said, we are going to make the best human therapeutics company that ever existed - not a pharmaceutical company but a company that can do both small molecules, proteins and antibodies; that can work to targets given to us by the human genome."

Fenton, the opening keynote speaker at the three-day conference, started his career at Pfizer, where he worked with the president of the NZ Biotechnology Association, Nufarm operations manager Peter Hosking.

He said Amgen founder George Rathmann told him from the start that his tiny start-up aimed to be as big as Pfizer.

"I thought this guy was crazy," Fenton said. "But after three hours arguing with me, he convinced me to throw in my lot with his company."

Amgen began with little more than a handful of scientists who knew how to synthesise genes and proteins.

The firm established partnerships with "big pharma" and other companies.

Funded by an initial US$19 million ($38 million) private equity placement, Amgen (Applied Molecular Genetics) initially focused on animal vaccines.

But its two blockbuster drugs, Epogen and Neupogen, turned out to be human drugs, for anaemia and chemotherapy side-effects respectively.

Fenton said he was unaware that Amgen had acquired a stake in Genesis when it took over Seattle-based Immunex in July, and knew of no plans for that holding.

Genesis chief executive Dr Jim Watson said Amgen reviewed Genesis' work before the Immunex takeover was finalised. He had received no indication that Amgen planned to alter its holding, but expected to make a more detailed presentation to the company next year.

Science Minister Pete Hodgson told the conference that New Zealand's biotech science was excellent, but its ability to commercialise it was "woeful".

Trade NZ biotech manager Jo McEvoy said the agency had put $50,000 into the conference as a sponsor because it was a chance to spotlight home-grown biotechology.

"It's the first time we have hosted something like this. It gives people the opportunity to see our technology and talk to our people first-hand."

The founders of Dunedin company Zenith Technology, Dr Max Shepherd and Dr Tak Hung, won the industry's annual Distinguished Biotechnologist Award.