AstraZeneca eyes more acquisitions to bolster pipeline, says CEO Brennan interview

The UK's second largest drugmaker, AstraZeneca, which has had a few recent pipeline disappointments (Marketletters passim), is ready to make more acquisitions - particularly of drug candidates in the respiratory, inflammation, infections, cardiovascular and oncology areas, to make up for these, the firm's chief executive. David Brennan, told Bloomberg in a recent interview.

Mr Brennan, who took over as AstraZeneca's CEO in January 2006 (replacing Sir Tom McKillop), said that the firm has about $7.0 billion in cash to invest this year, even though it has already spent $1.4 billion from 2006 to March this year in buying rights to new compounds. He told the news service: "we haven't put a dollar limit on what else we think we can do. We're interested in late-stage opportunities in a number of areas."

AstraZeneca accelerated its search for new compounds after the heart drug AGI-1067 became the latest compound to fall short of its target in April. This was the fourth developmental agent that Mr Brennan has shelved. The stroke drug NXY-059 (Cerovive), was dropped in October 2006. Prior to that was the demise of the novel indirect thrombin inhibitor Exanta (ximelagatran; Marketletter February 20, 2006), which originally had a peak sales forecast of some $1.0 billion, and then the type 2 diabetes drug candidate Galida (tesaglitazar; Marketletter May 22, 2006), which had been expected to achieve sales of as much as $800.0 million a year.