Astrazeneca boss pledges to boost drugs pipeline

The new boss of AstraZeneca today said the drugs giant must do more to bolster its product pipeline in the wake of a number of high-profile set-backs in clinical trials.

David Brennan declared the discovery of new medicines to be his “number one priority” since succeeding Tom McKillop as chief executive at the start of this year.

The company had enough cash to ramp up spending on research and development or buy the pipelines of rivals in the pharmaceuticals industry, Mr Brennan said.

His comments were delivered alongside a 34% rise in full-year profits to $6.67bn (€5.5bn), with sales growth of 10% to 23.95bn (€19.9bn) reflecting improved trading in all its major regions.

A flurry of deals over the past two months has seen AstraZeneca boost its portfolio, with £121m (€178m) spent on buying Cambridge-based biotech firm KuDOS Pharmaceuticals.

A deal worth up to £173m (€254.6m) was clinched with American firm Targacept to help develop a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia. AstraZeneca also signed an agreement in November worth £195m (€287m) to licence septic shock treatment CytoFab from UK rival Protherics.

Mr Brennan said: “The output from our discovery organisation has grown, and new medicines from both our own and external research have entered late stage development, including those from recent licensing transactions.

“However we will do more to further strengthen our product pipeline, and this is my number one priority.”

Investors need reassuring about AstraZeneca’s ability to find new blockbuster drugs after blood-thinning drug Exanta fell foul of US regulators in 2004 and the company later admitted that its Iressa cancer treatment was unable to prolong the life of patients significantly.

These problems resulted in AstraZeneca taking provisions of $156m (€129.3m) in its annual results for 2004.

At the same time, the Anglo-Swedish company is battling in the US courts to protect the patents covering its Seroquel treatment for schizophrenia, which generated sales of $2.76bn (€2.3bn) last year.