AstraZeneca Annual Report and Form 20-F Information 2008

Medicines

Backed by our 70-year track record of pharmaceutical innovation, we have a broad range of marketed medicines that continue to make a positive difference in important areas of healthcare. We actively and rigorously develop our brands to bring further benefit for patients and maximise their commercial potential.

Our range of medicines is highly competitive and includes 11 products each with annual sales of over $1 billion. Our business growth in the short to medium term is being driven by Arimidex, Crestor, Seroquel and Symbicort. Together with Nexium, these five key products provide the platform for our continued success whilst we enhance our pipeline for the future.

Our medicines are testament to the skills of our scientists and our commitment to working closely with physicians, patients and other stakeholders to understand what they need and what they value. Such relationships have helped us develop families of medicines – generation by generation – such as the hormone-based cancer treatments we have discovered since the 1970s, including Nolvadex (tamoxifen), Zoladex, Casodex, Arimidex and Faslodex. Among other benefits, these have played a part in increasing the five year survival rate for women with breast cancer from under 70% 50 years ago to around 90% today.

We introduced the world’s first proton pump inhibitor, Losec/Prilosec in 1988 – a breakthrough in the treatment of gastro-oesophageal reflux disease – and we have since developed an improved therapy, Nexium, which provides healing and symptom relief in more patients in a shorter time.

Even after a new medicine is launched, we continue to explore all the ways it can be used to maximise patient benefit. We have clearly defined development management programmes for our marketed products designed to optimise both the benefit they bring to patients’ lives and their commercial potential within the timeframe that patent protection is available to us.

For example, Crestor, our statin for lowering cholesterol levels has been used to treat over 14 million people since its launch in 2003. Studies in recent years have shown that not only does Crestor reduce cholesterol, it also slows the progress of atherosclerosis, or “hardening of the arteries”. In 2008, a major study reported that Crestor significantly reduced major cardiovascular events by 44% in patients with normal cholesterol levels but with other high risk factors.

Similarly, we first introduced Seroquel as a treatment for schizophrenia, and our subsequent studies have shown that it is also effective in treating both the manic and depressive dimensions of bipolar disorder. Recent clinical development has also been undertaken for the use of Seroquel in treating major depressive disorder and general anxiety disorder. Launched in 1997, Seroquel is now the most commonly prescribed atypical anti-psychotic in the US.

We also continue to develop better ways in which our medicines can be used. Our Symbicort Maintenance and Reliever Therapy (Symbicort SMART) is the first asthma treatment regime to combine both regular maintenance and as-needed reliever therapies – allowing patients to control daily symptoms and reduce asthma attacks using one inhaler, instead of the usual two or more. In another development, Symbicort is also now used to treat chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Our acquisition of MedImmune in 2007 brought some significant biological products into our portfolio. Synagis is the standard of care for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) prevention and has been administered to over one million premature babies around the world to help protect them from serious RSV disease. FluMist, the first intranasal influenza vaccine to be approved in the US, represents the first innovation in flu vaccination in more than 60 years.

Further information about all our major products can be found in the Therapy Area Review.

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