The Company Report. Astra Zeneca - Essay Example

AstraZeneca was incorporated in 1992 and is headquartered in London. It has 27 manufacturing sites in 19 countries. The company's portfolio of marketed medicines include Arimidex, Crestor, Nexium, Seroquel, Symbicort, Pulmicort, Zoladex, Seloken/Toprol-XL, Diprivan and Merrem. Across all activities, AstraZeneca continued to work closely with all stakeholders to provide medicines that meet patient needs and add value for society, within the scope of existing therapy areas and beyond. 1. Strengthening pipeline of new medicines: To bring the most benefit for patients and those who treat them, one must continue to understand what makes a difference for them - and apply that insight across all activities to remain targeted on their changing needs.

For the future, sustainable long-term success depends on further strengthening the flow of new products - whether from own laboratories or from outside AstraZeneca. 2. Marketing: Understanding the customer requirements and inventing a product that solves customer problems will not generate revenues for any organization. Success of any product depends on the way it is projected, marketed and on its lifecycle. This not exempt to pharmaceuticals industry. So, constant efforts have been made by the company on Marketing and delivering the full potential of all marketed medicines, through rigorous life-cycle management and excellent customer support.3. Investment:.

That investment is focused on life-cycle management of key marketed products, developing new products with an emphasis on efficiency and effectiveness improvements, and intelligent acquisition and licensing of products and technologies that will supplement our internal efforts. Major investments were also announced during the year in new R&D facilities that will support this strategy, notably in the UK and China.Company's recent performance:Strengthening pipeline of new medicines:Enhancing in-house discovery and development: During 2006, the company continued to improve the efficiency of internal R&D processes and the effectiveness of decision-making so that we can quickly eliminate weaker drug candidates.

The results of drive to improve productivity are reflected in the sustained size of the early development portfolio. During 2006, 21 candidate drugs were selected for development (compared with 25 in 2005 and 18 in 2004).We have a number of compounds in the later stages of