AstraZeneca

History

Astra AB was founded in 1913 in Södertälje, Sweden, by 400 doctors and apothecaries. In 1993 the British chemicals company ICI (established from four British chemical companies) demerged its pharmaceuticals businesses and its agrochemicals and specialities businesses, to form Zeneca Group PLC. Finally, in 1999 Astra and Zeneca Group merged to form AstraZeneca plc, with its headquarters in London. In 1999, AstraZeneca identified a new location for the company's US base, the "Fairfax-plus" site in North Wilmington, Delaware.

2000–2006

In September 2002, its drug Iressa (gefitinib) was approved in Japan as monotherapy for non-small cell lung cancer. On 3 January 2004 Dr Robert Nolan, a former director of AstraZeneca, formed the management team of ZI Medical.

In December 2005, the company acquired KuDOS Pharmaceuticals, a UK biotech company, for £120 million. That same year, the firm also became a Diamond Member of the Pennsylvania Bio commerce organisation.

In May 2006, following a collaborative relationship begun in 2004, AstraZeneca acquired Cambridge Antibody Technology for £702 million.

2007–2012: The patent cliff and subsequent acquisitions

In February 2007, AstraZeneca agreed to buy Arrow Therapeutics, a company focused on the discovery and development of anti-viral therapies, for US$150 million. AstraZeneca's pipeline, and "patent cliff", was the subject of much speculation in April 2007 leading to pipeline-boosting collaboration and acquisition activities. A few days later AstraZeneca acquired US company MedImmune for about US$15.2 billion to gain flu vaccines and an anti-viral treatment for infants; AstraZeneca subsequently consolidated all of its biologics operations into a dedicated biologics division called MedImmune.

In December 2009, AstraZeneca acquired Novexel Corp, an antibiotics discovery company formed in 2004 as a spin-off of the Sanofi-Aventis anti-infectives division. Astra acquired the experimental antibiotic NXL-104 (CEF104) (CAZ-AVI) through this acquisition.

In December 2011, AstraZeneca acquired Guangdong BeiKang Pharmaceutical Company, a Chinese generics business.

In February 2012, AstraZeneca and Amgen announced a collaboration on treatments for inflammatory diseases. Then in April 2012, AstraZeneca acquired Ardea Biosciences, another biotechnology company, for $1.26 billion. In June 2012, AstraZeneca and Bristol Myers Squibb announced a two-stage deal for the joint acquisition of the biotechnology company Amylin Pharmaceuticals. It was agreed that Bristol Myers Squibb would acquire Amylin for $5.3 billion in cash and the assumption of $1.7 billion in debt, with AstraZeneca then paying $3.4 billion in cash to Bristol Myers Squibb, and Amylin being folded into an existing diabetes joint venture between AstraZeneca and Bristol Myers Squibb.

2013 restructuring and beyond

In March 2013, AstraZeneca announced plans for a major corporate restructuring, including the closure of its research and development activities at Alderley Park in Cheshire and Loughborough in the UK and at Lund in Sweden, investment of $500 million in the construction of a new research and development facility in Cambridge and the concentration of R&D in three locations: Cambridge, Gaithersburg, Maryland (location of MedImmune, where it will work on biotech drugs), and Gothenburg in Sweden, for research on traditional chemical drugs. AstraZeneca also announced that it would move its corporate headquarters from London to Cambridge in 2016. That announcement included the announcement that it would cut 1,600 jobs; three days later it announced it would cut an additional 2,300 jobs. It also announced that it would focus on three therapeutic areas: Respiratory Inflammation & Autoimmunity, Cardiovascular & Metabolic Disease, and Oncology. In October 2013, AstraZeneca announced it would acquire biotech oncology company Spirogen for around US$440 million.

On 19 May 2014, AstraZeneca rejected a "final offer" from Pfizer of £55 per share, which valued the company at £69.4 billion (US$117 billion). The companies had been meeting since January 2014. If the takeover had proceeded, Pfizer would have become the world's biggest drug maker. The transaction would also have been the biggest foreign takeover of a British company. Many in Britain, including politicians and scientists, had opposed the deal. In July 2014 the company entered into a deal with Almirall to acquire its subsidiary Almirall Sofotec and its lung treatments including the COPD drug, Eklira. The US$2.1 billion deal included an allocation of US$1.2 billion for development in the respiratory franchise, one of AstraZeneca's three target therapeutic areas announced the year before. In August 2014 the company announced it had entered into a three-year collaboration with Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma on diabetic nephropathy.

In September 2014, the company joined forces with Eli Lilly in developing and commercialising its candidate BACE inhibitor – AZD3292 – used for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease; this deal was projected to yield up to US$500 million AstraZeneca. In November 2014, the firm's biologics R&D operation, MedImmune, agreed to acquire Definiens for more than US$150 million. It also began a Phase I/II trial collaboration with Pharmacyclics and Janssen Biotech investigating combination treatments. Also in November, AstraZeneca agreed to sell its lipodystrophy treatment business to Aegerion Pharmaceuticals for more than US$325 million. In December, the company received accelerated FDA approval for Olaparib in the treatment of women with advanced ovarian cancer who have a BRCA genetic mutation. A major criterion governing the drugs approval was, on average, its ability to shrink tumours in patients for 7.9 months.

Acquisition history

The following is an illustration of the company's major mergers and acquisitions and historical predecessors:

Operations

AstraZeneca develops, manufactures and sells pharmaceutical and biotechnology products to treat disorders in the oncology, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, infection, neuroscience, respiratory and inflammation areas.

AstraZeneca has its corporate headquarters in Cambridge, United Kingdom, and its main research and development (R&D) centres are in Cambridge (UK), Gaithersburg (Maryland, US), Mölndal in Gothenburg (Sweden), and Warsaw (Poland). In 2025 the company opened a new cell therapy manufacturing facility in Rockville, Maryland.

Headquarters

AstraZeneca's global headquarters are located in the Cambridge Biomedical Campus adjacent to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, England. The facility, known as the Discovery Centre, was designed by Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron and officially opened by Prince Charles on the 23 November 2021. The building is designed to accommodate over 2,200 scientists across 16 laboratories covering approximately 19,000 square metres (200,000 sq ft). It was built at a cost of approximately £1 billion.

In September 2025, the Discovery Centre was shortlisted for the Stirling Prize.

Cambridge-Gothenburg flights

In 2015, AstraZeneca arranged for the establishment of a direct air route between Cambridge and Gothenburg, which began operation on 2 March 2015. The company reserved 20 of the 32 seats on each flight, with the remaining seats available to the public, which was operated by SUN-AIR for British Airways. The service connects AstraZeneca’s global headquarters in Cambridge with its research facility in Gothenburg. The service operated four days per week and was intended to support collaboration between staff in the two locations, allowing same-day travel for meetings. The route ended as a scheduled public service in 2016 due to insufficient demand, but these flights continue for AstraZeneca employees as of 2024.

Orphan drugs

In April 2015, AstraZeneca's drug tremelimumab was approved as an orphan drug for the treatment of mesothelioma in the United States. In February 2016, AstraZeneca announced that a clinical trial of tremelimumab as a treatment for mesothelioma failed to meet its primary endpoint.

Senior management

As of 2008, David Brennan was paid US$1,574,144 for his role as chief executive officer.

On 26 April 2012, it was announced that Brennan was to retire in early June of that year. In August 2012, Pascal Soriot was named CEO of AstraZeneca.

It was also announced that Leif Johansson would succeed Louis Schweitzer as non-executive chairman on 1 June 2012, three months earlier than previously announced, and would become Chairman of the Nomination and Governance Committee after the 2012 Annual General Meeting.

The company's non-executive Board directors are Philip Broadley, Euan Ashley, Michel Demaré, Deborah DiSanzo, Diana Layfield, Sheri McCoy, Tony Mok, Nazneen Rahman, Andreas Rummelt, and Marcus Wallenberg.

Lobbying

Political lobbying

AstraZeneca is a member of the Personalized Medicine Coalition, a medical research advocacy group that lobbies on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry.

Contentious treatments and related matters

Seroquel

In April 2010, AstraZeneca settled a qui tam lawsuit brought by Stefan P. Kruszewski for US$520 million to settle allegations that the company defrauded Medicare, Medicaid, and other government-funded health care programs in connection with its marketing and promotional practices for the blockbuster atypical antipsychotic, Seroquel. According to the settlement agreement, AstraZeneca targeted its illegal marketing of the anti-psychotic Seroquel towards doctors who do not typically treat schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, such as physicians who treat the elderly, primary care physicians, pediatric and adolescent physicians, and in long-term care facilities and prisons.

In March 2011, AstraZeneca settled a lawsuit in the United States totalling US$68.5 million to be divided up to 38 states.

Nexium

The company's most commercially successful medication is esomeprazole (Nexium). The primary uses are treatment of gastroesophageal reflux disease, treatment and maintenance of erosive esophagitis, treatment of duodenal ulcers caused by Helicobacter pylori, prevention of gastric ulcers in those on chronic NSAID therapy, and treatment of gastrointestinal ulcers associated with Crohn's disease. When it is manufactured the result is a mixture of two mirror-imaged molecules, R and S. Two years before the omeprazole patent expired, AstraZeneca patented S-omeprazole in pure form, pointing out that since some people metabolise R-omeprazole slowly, pure S-omeprazole treatment would give higher dose efficiency and less variation between individuals. In March 2001, the company began to market Nexium, as it would a brand new drug.

The (R)-enantiomer of omeprazole is metabolized exclusively by the enzyme CYP2C19, which is expressed in very low amounts by 3% of the population. Treated with a normal dose of the enantiomeric mixture, these persons will experience blood levels five-times higher than those with normal CYP2C19 production. In contrast, esomeprazole is metabolized by both CYP2C19 and CYP3A4, providing less-variable drug exposure. While omeprazole is approved only at doses of up to 20 mg for the treatment of gastroesophageal reflux, esomeprazole is approved for doses up to 40 mg.

In 2007, Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine and a lecturer in social medicine at the Harvard Medical School, said in Stern, a German-language weekly newsmagazine, that AstraZeneca's scientists had misrepresented their research on the drug's efficiency, saying: "Instead of using presumably comparable doses [of each drug], the company's scientists used Nexium in higher dosages. They compared 20 and 40 mg Nexium with 20 mg Prilosec. With the cards having been marked in that way, Nexium looked like an improvement – which however was only small and shown in only two of the three studies."

Bildman fraud, sexual harassment and faithless servant clawback

On 4 February 1998, Astra USA sued Lars Bildman, its former president and chief executive officer, seeking US$15 million for defrauding the company. The sum included US$2.3 million in company funds he allegedly used to fix up three of his homes, plus money the company paid as the result of the EEOC investigation. Astra's lawsuit alleged Bildman sexually harassed and intimidated employees, used company funds for yachts and sex workers, destroyed documents and records, and concocted: "tales of conspiracy involving ex-KGB agents and competitors. This was in a last-ditch effort to distract attention from the real wrongdoer, Bildman himself." Bildman had already pleaded guilty in US District Court for failing to report more than US$1 million in income on his tax returns. In addition, several female co-workers filed personal sexual-harassment lawsuits against Bildman. In April 1998, Bildman was sentenced to 21 months in prison three months after he pled guilty to filing false Federal tax returns.

In February 1998, AstraZenaca's U.S. affiliate Astra U.S.A. agreed to a $10 million settlement after an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigation which started in May 1996 found that sexual harassment against female employees. 120 former female employees of Astra were interviewed during the inquiry, with about 80 of them being identified as able to file claims. Astra U.S.A. also issued a statement of apology for the hostile work environment.

In Astra USA v. Bildman, 914 N.E.2d 36 (Mass. 2009), applying New York's faithless servant doctrine, the court held that a company's employee who had engaged in financial misdeeds and sexual harassment must "forfeit all of his salary and bonuses for the period of disloyalty". The court held that this was the case even if the employee "otherwise performed valuable services", and that the employee was not entitled to recover restitution for the value of those other services. The decision attracted a good deal of attention by legal commentators.

CAFÉ study

In 2004, University of Minnesota research participant Dan Markingson took his own life while enrolled in an industry-sponsored pharmaceutical trial comparing three FDA-approved atypical antipsychotics: Seroquel (quetiapine), Zyprexa (olanzapine), and Risperdal (risperidone). University of Minnesota Professor of Bioethics Carl Elliott noted that Markingson was enrolled in the study against the wishes of his mother, Mary Weiss, and that he was forced to choose between enrolling in the study or being involuntarily committed to a state mental institution. A 2005 FDA investigation cleared the university. Nonetheless, controversy around the case has continued after a Mother Jones article was published.

Transfer mispricing

In February 2010, AstraZeneca agreed to pay £505 million to settle a UK tax dispute related to transfer mispricing.

Conflicting commitments to the UK and the EU over COVID-19 vaccines

In August 2020, AstraZeneca made an advance purchase agreement with the European Commission and the EU member states for the supply of COVID-19 vaccines:

"13.1. AstraZeneca represents, warrants and covenants to the Commission and the Participating Member States that: [...] (e) it is not under any obligation, contractual or otherwise, to any Person or third party in respect of the Initial Europe Doses or that conflicts with or is inconsistent in any material respect with the terms of this Agreement or would impede the complete fulfilment of its obligation under this Agreement;"

However, the UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Matt Hancock, declared in March 2021 that the United Kingdom had been given "exclusivity" and that the EU's treaty was "inferior". After placing the order for AstraZeneca's vaccine, the European Commission mistakenly assumed that it had enough vaccines and initially ordered only 200 million doses from Pfizer–BioNTech when the manufacturers offered 500 million doses to the EU in November 2020.

However, the contract that AstraZeneca reached with the UK was very similar to that it reached with the EU, and it also contained the phrase "best reasonable efforts"; the UK contract was signed on 28 August 2020, a day after the contract with the EU. The key difference seems to be that AstraZeneca entered into a preliminary agreement with the U.K. back in May 2020 which arranged for "the development of a dedicated supply chain for the U.K." The failure to produce the vaccine in the anticipated quantities contributed to the low vaccination rates of vulnerable populations of the European Union at the beginning of the outbreak of more virulent variants of SARS-CoV-2 in early 2021.

Operations in China and investigation

AstraZeneca's reputation in China was tarnished when its Chinese subsidiary did not quickly donate to relief efforts after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Typically, donations for disaster relief in China are made through funds established through the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs and its subordinate organization, the Red Cross Society of China. AstraZeneca had a corporate rule prohibiting foreign subsidiaries from making donations to local governments, and the company construed this rule as prohibiting donations for Sichuan earthquake relief efforts. AstraZeneca's Chinese subsidiary suffered a major backlash for its failure to donate. Corporate approval was eventually given for the Chinese subsidiary to donate, but only after a long delay.

During the early 2020s, AstraZeneca expanded its R&D pipeline within China, increasing its investment in the country; the firm also signed licensing agreements with nine separate biotech firms in China that have been collectively valued at $6.5 billion.

In May 2023, AstraZeneca's China president, Leon Wang, stated that the company aimed to be a "patriotic" company in China that "loves the Communist Party." On 30 October 2024, AstraZeneca said that Wang was under investigation by Chinese authorities and had been detained. The China business is now being run by Michael Lai, the general manager.

In November 2024, it was announced that Chinese officials had widened their investigation under a national anti-corruption campaign targeting healthcare. Among the allegations, former AstraZeneca employees are accused of falsifying genetic tests to secure reimbursement for the company’s lung cancer drug, Tagrisso. Several current and former company executives are also being investigated for potentially breaching data privacy laws and for the suspected illegal importation of certain cancer drugs – likely including Enhertu, Imfinzi and Imjudo – from Hong Kong.

Operations in Russia

Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, AstraZeneca faced criticism for maintaining its operations and continuing certain clinical trials in Russia, despite promising to halt new investments in the country. While several international pharmaceutical companies announced suspensions of new clinical studies in Russia after the conflict began, AstraZeneca moved forward with a study for a new COVID-19 prevention drug, essential for its registration in Russia.