Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd. – history, company profile (overview) and corporate video
Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd. is a pharmaceutical and biotechnology company, headquartered in Allschwil, Switzerland. It focuses on the manufacture of drugs that treat rare and orphan diseases.
HISTORY
Actelion was established in 1997 by husband and wife Jean-Paul and Martine Clozel, together with three colleagues after F. Hoffmann-La Roche cut their funding for Martine’s cardiovascular program. They founded Actelion to work on drugs for rare diseases. They also retained the rights to the intellectual property from Roche, including the molecule leading to the development of Tracleer, a drug for treating pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH).
In January 2017, Actelion was acquired by Johnson & Johnson.
In 2006, Actelion acquired CoTherix, a biopharmaceutical company located in South San Francisco, California. CoTherix (formerly known as Exhale Therapeutics, Inc.) focused on developing therapeutic products for the treatment of cardiopulmonary and other chronic diseases.
In June 2017, the company was listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange.
OPERATIONS
The company operates through the following business sectors:
- Cardiovascular, Metabolism & Retina;
- Immunology;
- Infectious Diseases & Vaccines;
- Neuroscience;
- Oncology;
- Pulmonary Hypertension.
With more than 40,000 employees, Actelion is considered one of the Largest Public Companies in the World, according to Forbes.
*Information from Forbes.com, Wikipedia.org, and Actelion.com
**Video published on YouTube by “M@G-TV“