Top Ten Drug Companies Named

The editors of R&D Directions magazine in the United States have once again identified the top 10 drug pipeline companies. The winners were announced at R&D Directions' 2005 Drug Development Summit on February 9 in Phoenix (Arizona, USA), where senior-level executives from each company accepted their awards.

The winner of the Most Advanced Pipeline/Best Biotechnology Pipeline category was Amgen (Thousand Oaks, CA, USA; www.amgen.com), while the winner of the Leading Oncology Pipeline was AstraZeneca (London, UK).

The company judged as having the Most Improved Pipeline was Bristol-Myers Squibb (New York, NY, USA). GlaxoSmithKline (London, UK) won for having the Strongest Early-Stage and Mid-Stage Pipeline.

The company with the Most Innovative and Best Late-Stage Pipeline was Eli Lilly & Co. (Indianapolis, IN, USA). The Most Productive and Strongest Primary-Care Pipeline was judged to be that of Novartis (Basel, Switzerland).

Pfizer (New York, NY, USA) won for the Most New Molecules/Largest and Most Diverse Pipeline, and the company having the Strongest Specialty-Care Pipeline was deemed to be Roche (Basel, Switzerland).

The award for the Most Expanded Pipeline went to Sanofi-Aventis (Paris, France), while Wyeth (Madison, NJ, USA) won for having the Pipeline to Watch.

The editors used the following pipeline criteria for making their selections: depth, diversification, advancing medicine, first-in-class, high sales potential, and R& D investment.