Amgen Company

Kevin Sharer has a thing for maverick war heroes. In his sunlit office in Thousand Oaks, a massive portrait of the often-flamboyant Gen. George Armstrong Custer hangs across from his desk. It complements one of English naval great Horatio Nelson, renowned for defying orders. Sharer has a military background himself, gained as an engineer on fast-attack Navy nuclear submarines during the Cold War. These days, at troubled Amgen Inc., he's emulating his risk-taking heroes more than ever.

Biotech giant Amgen Inc. reported a 1% profit increase for the fourth quarter of 2009, with stable sales for many of its popular drugs. The Thousand Oaks company said its drug sales in the quarter were mixed, with its colon cancer drug Vectibix showing growth. But sales of its anemia drug, Aranesp, dropped 20% in the U.S. and 8% worldwide after a study linked the medicine to increased risk of stroke, the company said. In a conference call with analysts, the company said fourth-quarter sales for Vectibix were $66 million worldwide, up 44% from $46 million a year earlier.

Moving to bolster its drug development pipeline, biotech giant Amgen Inc. agreed Monday to buy rival Tularik Inc. for $1.3 billion. The deal would give Amgen access to a trove of potential medications for cancer and inflammatory disease -- among the hottest areas of drug research. If approved by shareholders, the transaction would come less than a year after Amgen spent $120 million for a 21% stake in Tularik, which it wanted in order to obtain rights to early-stage cancer drugs.

Biotechnology company Amgen Inc. said lower costs in its research and sales units boosted third-quarter profit 24%, despite a continued downturn in anemia drug sales. The Thousand Oaks company also lifted its full-year profit outlook, but shares dropped in after-hours trading on news that additional study results would be needed to gain approval of the experimental drug Prolia as a treatment for cancer therapy-induced osteoporosis. The company also needs additional studies to gain approval for the drug as a preventive treatment.

Drug Production Interrupted at Amgen: The company said it has curtailed production of Epogen, one of its two main drugs, while it upgrades the water-filtering system at its Thousand Oaks factory. Amgen, the world's largest biotechnology company in terms of sales, said it expects to restart the system early next week and resume full production of Epogen within days after that.

All things considered, Gary K. Melton should have listened to his wife. That's what Melton's attorney conceded Monday after his client agreed to pay about $31,000 to settle insider trading charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Melton's wife, Farryn Melton, is vice president of strategic sourcing and procurement at Thousand Oaks-based Amgen Inc., where she had access to confidential information, according to the SEC.

Thousand Oaks-based Amgen Inc. will pay Johnson & Johnson $205 million to compensate for Amgen sales of an anemia drug for uses reserved to Johnson & Johnson in a licensing agreement. The arbitration ends an eight-year dispute stemming from a 1985 sales agreement that limits Amgen's U.S. sales of its Epogen drug to use in kidney dialysis patients.

Amgen Inc. and the Food and Drug Administration warned that counterfeit vials of Epogen, an anemia drug given to dialysis patients, have been discovered. Letters have been sent to doctors, pharmacists and drug wholesalers to alert them to the problem, which was announced on the Web sites of the FDA and Amgen, the maker of Epogen, on Wednesday. The letters say the counterfeit vials contain Epogen's active ingredient, but the concentration is about 20 times lower than it should be.

Bruce Wallace, a distinguished biologist and one of the first employees of biotech giant Amgen, was killed last week when his paraglider crashed into a cliff face near Mt. Whitney in the Sierra Nevada range. The 54-year-old Ojai resident, known for his dry wit and adventurous spirit, was flying at 12,000 feet Friday when the accident occurred, according to the Inyo County Sheriff's Department.

Amgen Inc. on Wednesday signed on as title sponsor of the 750-mile Tour of California, one of the biggest cycling races in the United States. The Thousand Oaks-based biotechnology giant said it hoped to use its sponsorship to draw attention to legitimate uses of its anemia drugs, which are sometimes abused by competitive cyclists seeking to enhance their performances.

Biotech giant Amgen Inc. saw its largest single-day stock-price jump in four years after announcing that its experimental bone-strengthening medicine worked better than a potential rival in a study comparing the two drugs in breast cancer patients. On Wednesday, the Thousand Oaks company's shares rose $7.27, a day-over-day increase of 13.9%, to close at $59.50 on the Nasdaq exchange.

Amgen Inc. paid $50 million Tuesday for the rights to develop and sell an experimental drug that treats heart failure. The drug, known as CK-1827452, is being developed to reactivate the heart's beating during heart failure by prompting muscle fibers to contract, said Mary Klem, a spokeswoman for Amgen. The hope is that Amgen of Irvine and Cytokinetics Inc. of San Francisco can develop the drug for the mass market, she said.

Amgen Inc. said it has filed for U.S. approval of denosumab for the treatment of osteoporosis in post-menopausal women and for bone loss in breast and prostate cancer patients undergoing hormone reduction therapy.

A former Amgen Inc. patent lawyer won a victory Tuesday in his effort to get restitution for his firing last year for what he called whistle-blower activities targeting the pharmaceutical giant. A Ventura County Superior Court judge ruled that Darrell G. Dotson of Newbury Park can pursue his case in court -- often a more lucrative path -- rather than through the company's arbitration process.

Biotech drug maker Amgen Inc. said Wednesday that its profit leaped in the third quarter, thanks to a comparison with a prior-year quarter weighed down by acquisition and restructuring charges. Because of higher sales and favorable exchange rates, the company raised its full-year earnings outlook even as it reported declining U.S. sales for its bestselling medication. Amgen earned $1.16 billion, or $1.09 a share, compared with $201 million, or 18 cents, a year earlier. Excluding one-time acquisition and restructuring costs, Amgen said it would have earned $1.23 a share, up 14% from the prior year.

Federal health regulators said Friday that they were reviewing an experimental use of blockbuster anemia drugs made by Amgen Inc. and Johnson & Johnson that have been associated with higher death rates in a study involving stroke patients. This month J&J reported results from a German trial in which more stroke patients treated with its drug Eprex died than those taking a placebo.

Amgen Inc. raised the wholesale price of its blockbuster drug Epogen by 3.9% on Thursday, drawing accusations of monopoly tactics from some of its major customers. The move, on the heels of an identical price increase last year, thrust the Thousand Oaks-based biotechnology company into the growing controversy over accelerating drug prices. Kent Thiry, chairman and chief executive of DaVita Inc., which operates 486 outpatient dialysis centers, accused Amgen of "abuse of monopoly power."