Based: United States
R&D budget: $745 million (€544M)
Change from 08: -14.8%
Income spent on R&D: 29%

Over the past year Celgene's ($CELG) R&D strategy has looked like a smaller version of Big Pharma's: Partner on ambitious new platforms to identify promising candidates and buy new products and programs. On the development side, Celgene forked over an eye-popping $130 million upfront to lease Agios' platform technology to find new candidates. And it is willing to pay up to $120 million in milestones for each new treatment that winds its way through to an approval.

On the buyout side it paid $2.9 billion in cash and stock for Abraxis in a deal that delivered the marketed drug Abraxane along with two clinical stage products and three preclinical candidates. And Celgene bought Gloucester Pharmaceuticals in January. Gloucester won approval for Istodax, which is used to treat a form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a year ago. And Celgene quickly rolled out plans to pursue research into the drug's other uses. 

Celgene gets the bulk of its revenue from Revlimid and Thalomid, and it would clearly like to diversify. A few months ago, at its first R&D day in five years, Celgene outlined plans for lung cancer; chemotherapy-induced anemia; multiple myeloma; Crohn's disease, a gastrointestinal disorder; psoriasis, a skin disorder; and psoriatic arthritis. Celgene shows no signs of backing off from a very ambitious R&D strategy.