Top Pharmaceutical Employers
pharmafile | June 14, 2006 | Feature | |Â Â careersÂ
AstraZeneca
AstraZeneca, the UK's second biggest home-grown big pharma company has continued to thrive over the last few years, despite some serious setbacks to its late-stage pipeline.
Disappointments over first-in-class drugs Exanta and Iressa have depleted the company's future prospects, but worldwide sales rose 12% to $11.8 billion in the first half of 2005, with operating profit surging 44% in the same period.
UK sales have been hit in recent years, however, and in 2004 the company slid to fifth in overall sales from number three in 2000.
UK sales have suffered since the patent expiry of Losec and a subsequent lack of enthusiasm for Nexium and statin Crestor, despite stronger uptake in other markets for these products.
But strong growth in a number of other products, most notably anti-psychotic Seroquel and breast cancer drug Arimidex mean the company's future remains bright.
The company employs nearly 12,000 people in its R&D operations in England and Sweden.
In the UK, AstraZeneca employs around 10,200 in total with around 7,500 based in Cheshire, with UK headquarters and marketing offices based at Horizon Place near Luton.
The company was ranked among the most respected pharma employers in a recent Science magazine survey.
For more information visit:
www.astrazeneca.com/careers (internnational site)
www.astrazeneca.co.uk/azcareers/index.asp (UK site)
Boehringer Ingelheim
Boehringer Ingelheim UK is a fast-growing company that has been consistently recognised as one of the country's best places to work.
For the last five years it has been ranked in The Sunday Times 100 Best UK Companies To Work For list, coming 19th in 2005.
The Best Companies to Work For survey is based on employee response and uses extensive questioning to identify best practice and ranks companies according to employee satisfaction.
The company is poised to break into the top ten companies on the back of sustained growth over a number of years.
Figures for 2004 put it in 11th place, moving up from 12th in 2003 and 13th position in 2000.
The Bracknell-based company has a turnover of 150 million and more than 750 employees. The purpose built site in Berkshire includes nine divisions, from prescription medicines to IT and finance.
One of the company's fastest growing products is its respiratory treatment Spiriva, co-marketed with Pfizer. Painkiller Mobic and hypertension treatment Micardis Plus are two other top sellers in a portfolio spanning therapeutic areas, including respiratory, cardiology, cerebrovascular, CNS, virology, urology.
Its most important recent launches were those for duloxetine, the single molecule
marketed for two separate indications.
Cymbalta/Xeristar is a new entrant to the highly competitive anti-depressant market and Yentreve/Ariclaim is the first ever treatment licensed for stress urinary incontinence.
Both products are co-marketed with Eli Lilly, and are tipped to be leading drugs in their fields.
For more information visit:
www.boehringeringelheim.co.uk/
GlaxoSmithKline
GlaxoSmithKline is the UK's largest home-grown pharma company and the second largest in the world, and as such has much to offer prospective employees.
The UK reflects global sales trends, with GSK in second place behind Pfizer its top-selling products in the UK include asthma/COPD treatment Seretide, CNS drug Lamictal and diabetes treatments Actos/Avandamet.
Among the most exciting drugs in its pipeline are breast cancer drug lapatinib and Cervarix the cervical cancer vaccine.
Two of the companys eight small biotech-like centres of excellence for drug discovery are in the UK one in Harlow, one in Stevenage.
The company, headquartered in Uxbridge, Middlesex is a popular choice for graduates. Science and engineering students from 17 universities voted it one of the two companies they would most like to join, according to a Universum survey.
GSK spent around 1 billion on R&D in the UK in 2004 more than any other pharma company at sites in Ware, Tunbridge, Welwyn Garden City, Beckenham, Greenford, Addenbrookes Hospital, Harlow and Stevenage.
For more information visit:
gsk.com/careers/university_uk.htm (UK graduate careers site)
Eli Lilly
Lilly has remained within the elite group of UK pharma companies since 2000, holding firm at ninth spot since then.
In addition to sales and marketing and manufacturing divisions, Lilly has a research centre based at Windlesham in Surrey, specialising in neuroscience research programmes.
Over the last two to three years the company has had an exceptional number of new products to launch Viagra challenger Cialis, lung cancer drug Alimta, ADHD treatment Strattera, depression drug Cymbalta and stress urinary incontinence brand Yentreve.
But the company has also been hit by falling US sales of its top-seller, anti-psychotic Zyprexa, a major factor behind a cost-cutting exercise across its global business. The UK company was listed in The Sunday Times Best Places to Work For three years in a row between 2002 and 2004.
The company recently opened a new 26 million UK research facility, which will concentrate on developing medicines in four disease areas: Parkinsons, Schiz-ophrenia, Alzheimers and pain syndrome.
For more information visit:
Janssen-Cilag
Janssen-Cilag is the prescriptions medicines arm of global healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson in Europe.
Janssen-Cilag was formed from the merger of Belgium-based Janssen Pharmaceutica and Cilag from Switzerland and became part of J&J in 1961.
Anti-psychotic drug Risperdal is the company's biggest selling brand in the UK, earning the company 47 million in primary care in England in 2004.
Other leading products in its broad portfolio include anaemia drug Eprex, epilepsy treatment Topamax, ADHD treatment Concerta XL, contraceptive patch Evra and cancer treatment Velcade.
The company has retained tenth spot in the overall UK sales rankings since 2000.
Janssen-Cilag employs around 780 people in the UK and Ireland across a range of business functions including sales and marketing.
The company conducts Drug Evaluation and Global Development at its UK headquarters in Saunderton near High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire.
For more information visit:
www.jnj.com/careers/global/index.htm
Merck Sharp & Dohme
Merck Sharp & Dohme is the UK subsidiary of US pharma company Merck & Co.
The global company is still recovering from Vioxx's withdrawal in September 2004, which exacerbated problems with slowing sales and a lack of promising candidates in the pipeline.
MSD occupied seventh spot in UK sales in 2004, but this position is likely to slip in the light of its problems and a re-emergent Roche, eighth in the rankings.
One product which could help restore the companys fortunes is gardasil, the worlds first vaccine for human papilloma virus which causes 70% of cervical cancer cases.
Despite its problems, MSD remains one of UK pharma's biggest employers. A UK team based at Hoddesdon is one of three product development sites worldwide.
For more information visit:
Novartis
Novartis was the sixth biggest pharma company in the UK in 2004 by sales, having maintained a steady presence in the top six or seven since 2000.
The company's pharma division employs over 2,000 people in the UK, a quarter of these working in R&D. Its headquarters are in Frimley, Surrey, while R&D and pharmaceutical operations are in Horsham, West Sussex.
Among its star brands are Diovan Neoral and Glivec.
Its late-stage pipeline includes two first-in-class drugs, AMD blindness treatment Lucentis and blood pressure drug aliskiren, scheduled for filing in late 2005 and early 2006 respectively.
Novartis was ranked 40th in the FT's Top 50 Best Places to Work survey 2005 and was praised for its excellent ways of sharing knowledge in the assessment.
For more information visit:
Pfizer
Pfizer has been the UK's largest pharmaceutical company since its merger with Pharmacia in 2003, seizing 11.4% of the market that year with sales of 1.28 billion, edging ahead of GSK on 1.08 billion.
Pfizer retained its number one spot in 2004 and looks likely to hold onto it, propelled by growing sales in a number of key brands.
Chief among these is cholesterol-lowering Lipitor, the biggest selling brand in the UK, with antidepressant Lustral, hypertension treatment Cardura XL, Alzheimers drug Aricept and Viagra among its other major earners.
Its not all plain sailing for Pfizer however sales of painkiller Celebrex have been badly hit by the Cox-II safety scare and Neurontins UK patent expired in 2004.
Pfizer invested 600 million on R&D in the UK and more than $7 billion globally during 2005 the largest R&D budget of any pharma company.
Four of the company's top ten products are world-leading pharmaceuticals discovered by scientists at the Pfizer discovery and development campus, at Sandwich in Kent.
Currently, 6,000 people are employed in the discovery, development, manufacture and marketing of human and animal medicines 3,600 of those are based in Sandwich.
Pfizer's UK business headquarters are in Walton Oaks, near Reigate, Surrey.
Pfizer was ranked eighth in The Sunday Times UK's Best Big Companies to Work For survey 2005, and won the Most Admired UK Pharma Company in the InPharm & Pharmafocus Career Survey in the same year.
For more information visit:
Roche
Roche employs around 1,800 people in the UK in pharmaceuticals, based at Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire, and diagnostics, based at Lewes in East Sussex.
Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Roche is re-emerging as one of the industry's most dynamic pharma companies after a number of years in the doldrums.
The UK is home to one of the company's three main global sites for drug development, employing around 600 people to lead international trials, manage UK trial centres and produce regulatory submissions for new products.
Three major new products have been launched in 2005: breakthrough cancer drugs Avastin and Tarceva and osteoporosis treatment Boniva.
Roche recently completed a new applied clinical development services building in Welwyn Garden City, for early drug clinical trials in healthy volunteers.
Most of Roche's global volunteer studies are managed out of Welwyn and the new building will enable the company to increase the number of early clinical trials conducted in its in-house Clinical Pharmacology Units (CPUs).
The new building is adjacent to Roches new UK HQ Hexagon Place.
For more information visit:
UK careers website:
Sanofi-Aventis
Sanofi-Aventis is the third biggest pharmaceutical company in the world and currently employs around 3,200 people in the UK.
The newly merged companys sales of E1.16 million in 2004 (from legacy companies Sanofi-Synthelabo and Aventis) put it in third place in the UK, with a market share of over 6%. Anti-clotting drug Plavix is the company's star performer, with 120 million sales in 2004 in England alone.
The company's medical, marketing, financial and legal departments are based in its newly refurbished headquarters at Guildford in Surrey. Its clinical research unit, which runs clinical trials in the UK and Ireland, and generic medicines subsidiary Winthrop Pharmaceuticals Limited are also based there.
Production sites in the UK are based in Fawdon near Newcastle, Holmes Chapel in Cheshire and Dagenham.
Other key products include cancer drugs Eloxatin and Taxotere, hypertension treatment Aprovel, and insulin brand Lantus.
For more information visit:
Wyeth
Wyeth achieved fourth place in the overall UK sales rankings in 2004, rising from fifth the year before and leapfrogging the much larger AstraZeneca in the process.
Behind this success have been a number of top selling brands. First among these is the company's ulcer treatment Zoton.
The drug was the third biggest earning brand in primary care in England in 2004, earning the company 228 million, but is fast approaching its patent expiry.
Another key brand is antidepressant Efexor, which earned 107 million in primary care sales in the same period, but these will be severely hit by new restrictions on GPs prescribing, enforced in early 2005.
Meanwhile, novel rheumatoid arthritis treatment Enbrel earned 27 million last year and is one of the companys fastest growing products, as are anti-rejection treatment Rapamune and prostate cancer drug Proscar.
Analysts consider Wyeth's pipeline to be strong.
Recently approved in the US was Tygacil, a new superbug fighting antibiotic, while promising new schizophrenia and depression drugs are in phase III. Wyeth's UK headquarters are in Taplow, near Maidenhead in Berkshire, and Steve Higgins was recently appointed as the companys managing director for the UK and Republic of Ireland.
For more information visit:
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