Direct quotes from company annual reports, SEC 10-K filings and company web sites.
Company Value Proposition Competitive Strategy
Group 1
Alexion
Pharmaceuticals
We believe that our GeneChip® system can facilitate the drug discovery and development process and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of health care.
Our business strategy is to capitalize on our leadership position in the DNA probe array field by applying our GeneChip® technologies to three primary areas: gene expression monitoring, DNA analysis and health management (Alexion Pharmaceuticlas 2001, p. 4).
Company believes its drugs have superior performance to those being researched by or under trial or sale by competitors (Alexion Pharmaceuticlas 2001, p. 24).
ICOS Corp ICOS is a product-driven company that
has expertise in both protein-based and small molecule therapeutics. We combine our capabilities in molecular, cellular and structural biology, high throughput drug screening, medicinal chemistry and gene expression profiling to develop highly innovative products expected to have significant commercial potential (ICOS Corporation 2002, p. 1).
We believe our strategy of targeting multiple therapeutic areas with drugs that act through distinct molecular mechanisms increases our chances of successfully developing commercial products (ICOS Corporation 2002, p. 1).
ImClone Systems
ImClone Systems’ goal is to become a fully-integrated biopharmaceutical company that has the capability and resources to take its novel pipeline compounds and develop them from the research and development stage through to commercial manufacture, marketing and sales
(www.imclone.com).
The Company has dedicated significant resources to hiring a talented group of scientists and establishing new laboratory facilities for its chemistry department. This
department has been charged with identifying and developing novel therapeutics that interrupt the internal cancer cell-signaling pathways that enable tumors to grow, spread and survive cell damage.
Our manufacturing capabilities remain a cornerstone in building a strong commercialization infrastructure to support this effort (ImClone Systems 2001).
Xenova Group Plc
Xenova is an integrated drug discovery and development company with both small molecule and biologics
capabilities (Xenova Group PLC 2003).
Technology represents a unique approach to the biological assessment of new chemical entities (NCEs). The key advantage … is the provision of high-quality data at earlier time points, thus accelerating the discovery of NCEs, while providing real savings in the time and cost of drug development (Xenova Group PLC 2003).
Group 2
Cambridge Antibody Technology Group Plc
CAT's strategy is to exploit the power of its platform technology to build a balance of long-term revenues from the development of novel antibody-based therapeutic products, and short-term revenues from research collaborations and licences of its technology
(Cambridge Antibody Technology Group PLC 2003).
The foundation of CAT's business is its unique antibody technologies, which it continues to develop and exploit. Based on this, CAT has established a position as a world leader, in the development of human monoclonal antibodies as new treatments for disease (Cambridge Antibody Technology Group PLC 2003). Human Genome
Sciences We are a leading genomics and biopharmaceutical company focused on therapeutic product development and functional analysis of genes using our proprietary technology platform (Human Genome Sciences 2001, Overview).
We have extensive capabilities in gene discovery, intellectual property
protection and preclinical and clinical development (Human Genome Sciences 2001, p. 36).
Human Genome Sciences holds patents on 205 human genes, pending patents on another 7500 genes (in 2002).
We initially set out to find as many genes as possible and are now using that information to develop medical and pharmacological products.
We use automated high-speed technology to:
- rapidly identify the function of and obtain proprietary rights to a substantial number of genes;
- select genes with the greatest
potential for the treatment and diagnosis of human disease. (Human Genome Sciences 2001, p. 21).
Millennium
Pharmaceuticals ‘…focused on applying our comprehensive and integrated science and technology platform to discover and accelerate the development of
breakthrough drugs and predictive medicine product’ (Millenium Pharmaceuticals 2001, p. 1).
‘…quality and breadth of our technology platform the skill of our employees and our ability to recruit and retain skilled employees, our
aggressive program of seeking patent protection for gene discoveries, our capabilities for early stage research and drug discovery and our capital resources are comp strengths (Millenium Pharmaceuticals 2001, p. 28).
Group 3
Affymetrix We believe that our GeneChip® system
can facilitate the drug discovery and development process and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of health care.
Our business strategy is to capitalize on our leadership position in the DNA probe array field by applying our GeneChip® technologies to three primary areas: gene expression monitoring, DNA analysis and health management (Affymetrix 2001, p. 4).
Our business strategy is to capitalize on our leadership position in the DNA probe array field by applying our GeneChip® technologies (Affymetrix 2001, p. 5).
LION Bioscience
LION Bioscience is dedicated to enabling life science companies to bring products to market faster through comprehensive process integration and
LION’s SRS platform is the industry standard for data integration. More than 60 leading life science companies and over 130 academic institutions use
decision support solutions across the entire research and development value chain. LION’s team of scientific and IT experts combine their domain expertise to develop performance software solutions best suited to life science research (Lion Bioscience AG 2002a).
SRS. The core strength of the SRS system is to provide rapid access and query functionality to more than 500 mainly flat-file or text-based databases, representing the vast majority of public biological databases. Their content is required predominantly for the early steps of the R&D process (Lion Bioscience AG 2002b).
Qiagen ‘…is the world’s leading provider of
innovative enabling technologies and products for the separation and purification of nucleic acids’ (Qiagen 2001, p. 11).
‘Its technologies represent substantial advances in the speed, reliability and ease of use of nucleic acid separation and purification processes and the purity and yield of the resulting nucleic acids’ (Qiagen 2001, p. 13).
The Company believes that its competitors do not have the same comprehensive approach to nucleic acid separation and purification and therefore cannot provide the broad range and depth of products and services offered by QIAGEN in that area. QIAGEN believes that its proprietary technologies and products offer significant advantages over competitors' products, with regard to purity, speed, reliability, and throughput (Qiagen 2001, p. 31).
Group 4
Amgen Discovers, develops, manufactures, and
markets human therapeutics based on advances in cellular & molecular biology (Amgen 2001a, p. 2).
The Company focuses its research and development efforts on human
therapeutics delivered in the form of proteins, monoclonal antibodies, and small molecules in the therapeutic areas of nephrology, cancer, inflammation, and neurology and metabolism (Amgen 2001a, p. 2).
Summary of points from Annual Report
2001 and 10-k filings.
- Licensing and other collaborative arrangements important source of product candidates that
complement internal R&D (Amgen 2001b, p. 23).
- Combination supplies ‘robust
pipeline of potential therapeutics’ supported by clinical development capabilities around the world.(high value drug development pipeline). - Able to leverage recently built-up
sales and marketing infrastructure.
- Speed with which the Company can
develop products, complete the testing and approval process, and supply commercial quantities of the product to the market is expected to be important to Amgen’s
competitive position (Amgen 2001a, pp. 10-13).
Biogen Global biopharmaceutical company that
develops, manufactures and markets novel human therapeutic products. Our primary focus is developing
pharmaceutical products that meet unmet medical needs, particularly in our core therapeutic areas of neurology, dermatology and rheumatology (Biogen 2002, p. 2).
We believe that competition and leadership in the industry will be based on managerial and technological superiority and establishing proprietary positions through research and development. Leadership in the industry may also be influenced significantly by patents and other forms of protection of proprietary information (Biogen 2002, p. 9).