Amgen

Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ: AMGN, SEHK: 4332) is an international biotechnology company headquartered in Thousand Oaks, California. Located in the Conejo Valley, it is one of the top corporations in the Tech Coast area. Amgen is the largest independent biotech firm, with approx. 14,000 staff members including the 150 Allied-Barton Security staff and A-post personnel in 2007. Its products include EPOGEN, ARANESP, ENBREL, Kineret, Neulasta, NEUPOGEN, and Sensipar / Mimpara. EPOGEN and NEUPOGEN (the company's first products on the market) were the two most successful biopharmaceutical products at the time of their respective releases.

BusinessWeek ranked Amgen fourth on the S&P 500 for being the most "future-oriented" of those five hundred corporations.[1] BusinessWeek ostensibly calculated the ratio of research and development spending, combined with capital spending, to total outlays; Amgen had the fourth highest ratio, at 506:1000.

Amgen is the largest employer in Thousand Oaks and second only to the United States Navy in terms of number of people employed in Ventura County. Amgen is also a member of the Pennsylvania Bio commerce organization.[2]

With plans to expand into a new campus under construction in South San Francisco, Amgen abruptly halted construction on the plans and instead put the 365,000 square feet (33,900 m2) of new space on the sublease market.[3]

In 2006, Amgen began sponsoring the Tour of California, one of only two major Union Cycliste Internationale events in the United States.