Amersham - bringing vision to medical discovery

Amersham is a world leader in medical diagnostics and in life sciences. Our company is focused on enabling molecular medicine, working through three main business areas in diagnostic imaging, protein separations and discovery systems. Headquartered in the UK, we employ over 10,000 people worldwide and had sales of £1.62 billion ($2.54 billion) in 2002. Amersham shares (AHM) are traded on the London, New York and Oslo stock exchanges and we are part of the FTSE index of Britain's 100 largest public companies.

Our strategy is to build our position as a leading provider of products and technologies enabling disease to be better understood, diagnosed sooner and treated more effectively, based upon a growing understanding of disease at the molecular level.

Amersham is organised in two businesses, Amersham Health (medical diagnostics and therapy products) and Amersham Biosciences (discovery systems and protein separations). The company was formed in 1997 from the mergers of Amersham International (UK), Pharmacia Biotech (Sweden) and Nycomed (Norway). Sir William Castell is Amersham's Chief Executive.

Our businesses

Amersham Health provides diagnostic imaging agents which highlight organs, tissues and cells inside the human body, for the early detection, diagnosis and management of disease.

Amersham Biosciences provides enabling technologies for gene and protein research, drug screening and testing, and protein separations systems for the manufacture of biopharmaceuticals.

Towards personalised medicine

Amersham's long-term vision is to enable personalised medicine. The aim of personalised medicine is to be able to predict and prevent disease before its symptoms become acute, and treat it with therapies tailored to the individual's genetic profile. We are already working in our three main business areas to help bring about this profound change in healthcare.

In discovery systems, we help scientists understand the role of genes, proteins and cellular processes in disease, and how these affect response to treatment. In medical diagnostics, we are developing molecular diagnostics that can detect disease before symptoms show, provide a more accurate prognosis, and link diagnosis more closely to targeted therapeutics. In protein separations, we provide protein purification and bioprocess systems for manufacturing the new biological drugs and vaccines that are emerging from biomedical research.

Research and development

Amersham has a long-standing commitment to research and development and a strong track record of innovation in both life sciences and medical diagnostics. We employ more than 1,200 scientists and in 2002 invested £184 million in R&D. Our Portfolio Committee, composed of senior people from our company and external scientists, oversees the research investment across Amersham and identifies the wider market opportunities that spring from our cross-business co-ordination. In addition to our in-house research, we collaborate extensively with external research groups in academia and industry. We have also brought together a group of leading scientific and medical experts on our Science Advisory Board, who advise the executive management on science policy and strategy.

Global operations

Amersham has research, development and manufacturing facilities at some 30 sites in North America, Europe and Asia. Our sales organisation includes offices in more than 50 countries as well as an extensive network of agents and distributors, serving hospitals, clinics, research laboratories, biotechnology firms and pharmaceutical companies across the globe.