Company: Amgen ($AMGN)
Based: Thousand Oaks, CA
R&D budget: $2.8B (€2.15B)
Change from 2009: +1%
Net sales spent on R&D: 19.2%

When the world's biggest biotech sees R&D costs as a portion of net sales drifting close to the 20% mark, analysts fret. In the third quarter, Amgen's research costs surged 11%, with AMG 386, ganitumab (AMG 479), talimogene laherparepvec--a promising therapeutic cancer vaccine which has also been called OncoVex (GM-CSF)--and AMG 145 driving its expenses northward. Like many Big Pharma companies have been doing, Amgen moved to fix the math, axing 380 R&D workers and clustering its resources more closely around those late-stage programs.

The jewels in Amgen's R&D crown:

• Ganitumab (AMG 479), a monoclonal antibody designed to block a chemical signal that allows tumors to grow unchecked. The drug targets type 1 IGF-1R, a cell growth regulator. By inhibiting IGF-1R, Amgen's investigators believe they can put the brakes on pancreatic cancer tumors and improve overall survival rates for patients.


• AMG 386, now moving into late-stage studies for ovarian cancer. The treatment combined with paclitaxel demonstrated antitumor activity in a randomized Phase II study with 161 patients. AMG 386 is what Amgen describes as a "first-in-class investigational peptibody" designed to target the blood vessels that feed tumors. 


• OncoVex, which was so alluring that the world's biggest independent biotech offered up to a billion dollars to gain control of BioVex, which had developed the melanoma drug. The therapeutic cancer vaccine not only attacks cancer cells with a cold sore virus, it also revs up the immune system to prompt an attack on the disease. AMG 145, meanwhile, is being investigated for the treatment of hypercholesterolemia, or high levels of cholesterol in the blood.

Amgen's executive team has a perfect understanding of its priorities. It needs to see a big approval in the near term, handle its cash in accordance with Wall Street rules and prove its future deserves to be seen as bright as its biggest earners face growing competition.