March 22, 2000 - Salomon Smith Barney analyst Meirav Chovav predicts that Amgen will win its patent dispute and that the Amgen stock price will soar in the coming months.

Amgen has also become the #1 Biotechnology Company, according to the annual Genetic Engineering News survey.

March 21, 2000 - Amgen stock lost 5 1/8 on Monday and fell to $58.00 on concerns that the they might lose a legal battle over patents concerning their Epogen�� product. Amgen, the world's #1 biotechnology company, goes to court next week against tiny Transkaryotic Therapies. Here is a press release from April 1998 from the Amgen web site that explains the basis of their lawsuit against Transkaryotic Therapies.

Transkaryotic Therapies stock price also fell over $4 on Monday.

Other EPO-related news includes this somewhat confusing press release from the Elanex Pharma Group about their low dose EPO product. Elanex also recently announced their plans to market their EPO product in Poland.

March 14, 2000 - Two Amgen related news stories:

An arbitrator ruled Amgen can't cancel its contract with Johnson & Johnson. Currently, their contract states that Amgen will sell EPO to the dialysis market and J&J will sell EPO to all other markets.

Amgen and other large biotech companies could be position to purchase other large drug companies, according to this story from Bloomberg.


[This message has been edited by Gary Peterson (edited 03-23-2000).]