West Coast Editor

Amgen Inc. launched a $100 million venture capital fund for start-up biotechnology firms that will let the West Coast giant get a piece of the early stage action as far away as Boston.

Based in San Diego, Amgen Ventures mainly will dole out funding for research by young enterprises working in areas of interest to the heavyweight parent company - the world's largest biotechnology concern - but intends also to include those with "novel modalities with the potential to address targets in both current and emerging therapeutic areas of interest," Amgen said.

The fund was disclosed Thursday. Amgen's stock (NASDAQ:AMGN) ended Friday at $59.97, up 9 cents.

"We haven't structured it out in terms of how much per year, but it's going to be $1 million to $3 million per company, per round," said Christine Cassiano, spokeswoman for Thousand Oaks, Calif.-based Amgen. "We don't anticipate owning more than 15 percent [of a given company], and in most cases it will be less."

She said no specific part of the country will be emphasized, though "obviously we're looking to maximize the locations that we have - Seattle, San Francisco, Boston. We already have a footprint in those areas."

Amgen can spare the cash. Its third-quarter net income reached $236 million, or 18 cents per share, compared to $612 million, or 46 cents per share, for the third quarter of last year - down 61 percent, but that was due to the $554 million write-off for the acquisition of South San Francisco-based Tularik Inc., disclosed in the spring and completed this summer. (See BioWorld Today, March 30, 2004, and Oct. 22, 2004.)

Setting aside the takeover of Tularik and other special expenses, earnings would have totaled $839 million, or 64 cents per share, an 18 percent rise over the same period in 2003. Product sales in the U.S. totaled $2.1 billion, an increase of 20 percent compared to the third quarter of last year, and international sales were $419 million compared to $300 million, an increase of 40 percent.

Minus the foreign exchange impact, international sales would have jumped 31 percent.

By giving a boost to early stage companies as they begin operating, "the idea is that it may pave the way for a more traditional type of collaboration" down the road, Cassiano told BioWorld Today.

She noted that, in 2003, Amgen undertook "a more aggressive outreach program for licensing, working on having companies think more about Amgen as a partner, and this is another component of that outreach."