Amgen Expanding Cancer Treatments

Amgen Inc., the world’s biggest biotechnology company, recorded more than $5 billion in cancer drug sales last year. Not one dollar came from a medicine designed to destroy tumors.

That may change as soon as September. The 26-year-old Thousand Oaks-based biotech, which built itself into the top U.S. seller of cancer drugs with treatments for chemotherapy side effects, has set up campuses close to academic research centers and bought smaller rivals to push its way into the market for tumor-fighting drugs.

Amgen this year plans to introduce the first of those medicines, the colon-cancer treatment panitumumab, as Chief Executive Kevin Sharer seeks to compete against ImClone Systems Inc.’s Erbitux.

Amgen says 15 years of selling cancer drugs gives it an edge, even as some analysts say its treatment may not be able to dislodge Erbitux.

“We are really well set up,” Chief Financial Officer Richard Nanula said. Nanula said that he, like other top Amgen executives, spent about four days a year calling on doctors with sales representatives. “Our sales force is well-respected and often seen.”

Amgen will need all the help it can get from its sales force when it introduces panitumumab. The drug will go up against Erbitux, which has been on the market for more than two years. Data released in March failed to show that panitumumab was dramatically better than Erbitux, analysts said.

“We believe Erbitux should continue to have a strong advantage,” said Michael King, an analyst at Rodman & Renshaw in New York, who rates ImClone shares “market outperform” and doesn’t own either stock.

Sharer has said sales of panitumumab, acquired through the purchase of Abgenix Inc., will reach $2 billion a year. The drug is the centerpiece of an expansion into targeted therapies, which exploit weaknesses in cancer cells.

Amgen has seven other targeted drugs in clinical trials.

Amgen must succeed with panitumumab to hold off South San Francisco-based Genentech Inc. The world’s second-biggest biotech company, Genentech has set a goal of surpassing Amgen as the U.S. leader in the oncology market by 2010. Genentech sells more targeted therapies than any other company and some analysts predict its Avastin cancer medicine may become the bestselling cancer drug ever with $5 billion to $10 billion in annual sales.