Celgene Corp. at Leerink Swann Cancer Medicines Conference - Final.

Original Source: FD (FAIR DISCLOSURE) WIRE

UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: Our first presenting company, Celgene Corporation. Representing the company will be Perry Karsen, Senior Vice President, Business Development.

PERRY KARSEN, SVP, CELGENE CORP.: Okay. Thank you, Howard. And thanks to all of you for being here this morning. So before I begin, I just need to remind you that I will be making certain forward-looking statements this morning and you should refer to our SEC filings for further details on the risks associated with my statements.

So we're very pleased to be invited to this meeting this morning to look at new therapies for cancer, given that Celgene's mission is to discover, develop and bring to market novel cancer therapeutics, as well as therapeutics in the inflammatory disease area.

And to that mission, this year, we've had two very significant events. The most recent was at the end of June when Revlimid, an analogue of Thalidomide was approved for the use in multiple myeloma in combination with dexamethasone after one previous treatment. This truly was a milestone in the development of new therapeutics for multiple myeloma following on an approval for Thalidomide earlier this year. The approval first for Revlimid was in MDS5Q minus. And then at the end of June, for multiple myeloma. And it was our third approval for Celgene in six months.

Now prior to that, on May 25th, Thalidomide was approved in the use of first line treatment in combination with dexamethasone in multiple myeloma. And as many of you know, Thalidomide is a drug that has been around for many years with a history to it. And this truly was a milestone event, not only for patients and for Celgene, but for the FDA, the cooperative groups and all the parties that were associated and involved with bringing Thalidomide back to the market for very important indication and to treat patients who are definitely in need of this therapeutic.

We believe at Celgene that we're very strategically positioned. We have strong commercial performance based on Thalidomide and now following up with Revlimid. Revlimid truly is a product to transform Celgene from a company that had previously marketed Thalidomide to one that will have a broader number of therapeutics and will allow us then to continue to invest in research and development and bring other therapeutics to the market in cancer and inflammatory disease.

These products will come from a number of areas within Celgene. We have a cellular signaling group out in San Diego that works in many of the areas that Howard was referring to in kinase and inhibition. And a group out in New Jersey that works specifically on developing new analogues of Thalidomide with different properties that will complement or supplement those of Revlimid and Thalidomide.

Our pipeline is completely unencumbered. It's broad. It's deep. I'll mention a few of those compounds in a moment. And it has not been partnered with any other companies to this time. We have the financial resources to continue to invest in our pipeline. $760 million on our balance sheet. And we will opportunistically invest in those molecules that we believe have promise to the market, as well as looking externally for other compounds that we believe would have promise for patients and ultimately would benefit by Celgene bringing those to the market place.

We're establishing an international team in Europe and elsewhere on the globe, and I'll refer to that in a moment, to allow us to fully develop our pipeline, not only in the United States, but outside the U.S. as well and bring those products to patients throughout the globe. And we have a management team that is broad and deep with experience throughout oncology, inflammatory disease that comes from the biotech industry, big pharma and has brought to Celgene a group that now can fully execute on the promise of the development of these compounds and bring them successfully to the market place.

Over the past few years, given the progress of Thalidomide, we've been able to generate increasing revenue and we've used a lot of that revenue to invest in our pipeline. As you'll see R&D expenses have increased over the past few years as …