Biotechnology Leader Amgen Is Recognized : Thousand Oaks: In a White House ceremony, the firm is honored for two cutting-edge drugs developed in its local lab.
Drug manufacturer Amgen Inc. was awarded the prestigious National Medal of Technology on Monday, making it the first biotechnology firm to win the country’s highest prize for technological advancements.
Gordon M. Binder, chief executive officer of the Thousand Oaks-based company, accepted the award from Vice President Al Gore and Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and later joined other honorees at a private Oval Office ceremony with President Clinton.
“You are true national heroes,” Gore told the winners, praising their commitment to learning and the boost their work has given to the national economy. “The importance of science and technology to our nation simply cannot be overstated. Nothing has more power to improve the quality of our lives, and nothing contributes more to economic growth and competitive success in the economic markets.”
The award has gone in past years to such heavyweight firms as General Electric, AT & T Bell Laboratories, DuPont Co. and Microsoft. Amgen won the honor for two cutting-edge drugs--Epogen for dialysis patients and Neupogen for those undergoing chemotherapy--developed at the company’s Thousand Oaks labs.
“This award is the first for our industry in its very short but remarkable history,” Binder said in a statement.
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Founded in 1980, Amgen has grown into the nation’s largest biotechnology firm, earning profits of $383 million in 1993 on $1.37 billion in sales. It has 3,200 employees worldwide.
In praising the award winners, Brown said high-tech firms offer higher incomes than companies that have not invested in the latest technology and create jobs with their innovations.
Amgen officials hope the honor will serve as encouragement to the struggling biotechnology industry. In recent years, officials said, products have failed at some firms, investments have slowed to the industry in general, and Federal Drug Administration regulations continue to slow development of new drugs.
“We’re quite proud of this and consider it important not just to Amgen but to an industry that has made a lot of dramatic breakthroughs but is still struggling to be profitable,” said Pete Teeley, Amgen’s vice president for government and public relations. “For us, it’s been very difficult, but it’s also been rewarding. It is a very time-consuming and costly process to be successful in the lab and go to market.”
The National Medal of Technology was created by Congress in 1980 to recognize technological achievements. Nominations are submitted from the private sector and are reviewed by a Commerce Department committee made up of top scientists.
One of six winners this year, Amgen was honored “for its leadership in developing innovative and important commercial therapeutics based on advances in cellular and molecular biology for delivery to critically ill patients throughout the world.”
The two Amgen drugs are taken by more than 350,000 patients in the United States and others around the world.
Epogen, approved by the FDA in 1989, is a genetically engineered human protein that stimulates red blood cells in bone marrow. It is used to treat anemia in dialysis patients and has eliminated 10% of all blood transfusions nationwide.
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The second drug, Neupogen, stimulates the body’s ability to produce infection-fighting white blood cells. Such cells are often destroyed during chemotherapy, exposing patients to life-threatening infections. Neupogen, which received FDA approval in 1991, helps patients continue on chemotherapy with less fear of infection.
Amgen is already in the midst of developing its third drug, Infergen, for hepatitis sufferers, officials said. The company hopes to submit it to the FDA for approval in 1995.
There were four individual scientists who won the coveted technology award Monday.
The only other corporate winner for 1994 went to Corning Inc., whose products range from windows for the space shuttle to improvements in catalytic converters used to reduce pollutants from cars.
