AstraZeneca Annual Report and Form 20-F Information 2008

Discovery research

In discovery research, we analyse many thousands of compounds for their potential to become a new medicine. Only a few make it through the various, increasingly demanding, stages of discovery research through which we identify the most promising candidates for clinical development. Our discovery teams work closely with clinical and development teams to prioritise their activities in line with our disease area strategies.

We continue to improve the quality of chemical leads and biological targets so that we can eliminate, at an early stage, those compounds that are unlikely to make it through development. We have invested in a number of key academic collaborations to identify potential new targets, disease mechanisms and technology platforms. For example, collaborations with Melior Discovery (Exton, Philadelphia, US) and Graffinity Pharmaceuticals (Heidelberg, Germany) help us to identify more rapidly those high quality, novel compounds which have the potential to proceed rapidly through discovery into clinical development. In addition we have continued to increase the speed and efficiency of our drug discovery processes using Lean Sigma^™ approaches.

We believe that one of the reasons for our productivity success in Discovery over the past five years is because we have taken a long-term view and maintained consistency of focus over time on our strategic objectives. Latest industry benchmarks indicate that our speed and cost-effectiveness in Discovery have moved into the top quartile, while our delivery of candidate drugs this year exceeded our targets despite managing significant change across the organisation.