Who is the founder of amgen

Rathmann retired in from Icos, which later had modest success selling a drug to treat impotence. Afterward, Rathmann served on the boards of two small biotech firms, still eager to inspire the drumbeat of research. He was drawn to science and was inspired by an older brother who was a chemist. Initially, Rathmann planned to attend medical school and sped through his undergraduate work at Northwestern University in three years before changing plans and earning a doctorate in physical chemistry at Princeton.

He worked at several companies and rose to director of research at Abbott Laboratories before quitting the pharmaceutical firm to enter the struggling field of biotechnology. And in his late 70s, Rathmann himself became a dialysis patient and took EPO.

Sometimes those in the audience would tell him how his wonder drugs had saved their lives. In addition to his son Richard, he is survived by his wife of 61 years, Joy; son James and daughters Margaret, Laura Jean and Sally Kadifa; and 13 grandchildren.

Erythropoeitin is a hormone that stimulates red blood cell creation, and the drug gained an indication for anaemia associated with kidney dialysis in The next drug Amgen brought to market in was Neupogen, a recombinant version of G-CSF granulocyte colony-stimulating factor , that could be used to treat chemotherapy-induced neutropenia in cancer patients.

As with Epogen, the initial discoveries that laid the basis for the drug had been made well back in the 80s, when the company was unprofitable. That decade of investment and research was paying off. A new CEO, Kevin Sharer, took the helm around the turn of the millennium, and rapidly moved to capitalise on the research groundwork laid by his predecessors.

It was also breaking into the rheumatology disease area with the approval of Kineret in , and its acquisition, through the merger with Immunex a year later, of the anti-TNFmonoclonal antibody Enbrel. It focused on other innovative biotechnology companies, acquiring Synergen in , Immunex in , the owners of Enbrel, Tularik in who focused on the biology of transcription factors and Abgenix in After working tirelessly for two years, they do it.

Amgen establishes its European headquarters in Lucerne, Switzerland. Later, the European headquarters will relocate to Zug, also in Switzerland. Over the next several years, Amgen would quickly establish offices across Europe, including a key manufacturing and distribution center in Breda, the Netherlands. Amgen establishes the Amgen Foundation as a way to coordinate the various groups and individuals who were already giving back to the community. With a deep and broad pipeline of potential new medicines, Amgen remains committed to advancing science to dramatically improve people's lives.

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