In addition to ensuring that Amgen’s investment decisions are based on compelling science, we are reengineering our processes to operate more efficiently. This ongoing effort aims to improve our success rates and cycle times while lowering costs, enabling us to deliver more new medicines from our investment in R&D.
In pursuit of this goal, Amgen is building a culture of continuous improvement, supported by a range of actions designed to increase our overall productivity. For example,We have trimmed our project portfolio to eliminate research programs that are less likely to offer patients significant benefits over other available treatments.
To reduce the cost and complexity of our network of research sites, we have consolidated more scientists in the research hubs of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and South San Francisco, California.
Through a fast-to-patient approach for producing monoclonal antibodies, we are cutting by up to a year the time needed to get these potential therapies into the clinic.
Amgen is also designing leaner clinical trial programs through streamlined protocols, centralized monitoring of clinical sites, risk-based quality control, and careful management of clinical supplies. By 2018, we expect these efforts and other process improvements to cut the cost of our clinical trials by significantly while trimming the average duration of Amgen’s clinical programs by six months.