Long a two-hit wonder, Amgen is on the brink of a research renaissance that will target cancer, diabetes and more. Amgen started life in California as a biotech boutique obsessed with the new science of genetic engineering. Twenty-five years later it is a teenage hippie trapped inside the musclebound body of a $10 billion-a-year behemoth. Old-line drugmakers were founded a century ago on the East Coast, cranking out chemical compounds aimed at quelling myriad illnesses. Amgen came along a few generations later, based 30 miles north of Hollywood and pursuing not pills but man-made copies of human proteins to offset shortages of the real thing. For this talent Amgen, FORBES’ Company of the Year for 2004, is prized far more highly than some of the biggest names in Big Pharma. Amgen ranks only 13th in sales among drugmakers, yet it is number six in stock market value. With a market cap of $80 billion, Amgen is worth almost $15 billion more than Eli Lilly & Co. and $30 billion more than Bristol-Myers Squibb, though both have sales that are 40% to 120% larger.
