Amersham, headquartered in England, is a world leader in medical diagnostics and life sciences. The Amersham Group employs over 10,000 people worldwide and had sales of GBP1.62 billion ($2.43 billion) in 2002. The company was formed in 1997 through the mergers of Amersham International (UK), Pharmacia Biotech (Sweden) and Nycomed (Norway).
Amersham has three main business areas: medical diagnostics, operating as Amersham Health, and protein separations and discovery systems, together operating as Amersham Biosciences.
-- Amersham Health (59 percent of total Amersham sales in 2002) develops, manufactures and distributes diagnostic imaging agents and radiopharmaceuticals for all imaging modalities that are used in medical imaging procedures. These diagnostic agents enhance and enable the imaging of anatomy, organs, tissue and cells to assist with the early detection, diagnosis and management of diseases. Key products include the imaging agents OmnipaqueTM, MyoviewTM, OmniscanTM and VisipaqueTM;
-- Protein separations (17 percent of total Amersham sales in 2002) develops, manufactures and distributes chromatography purification systems, membrane products and reagents that are used in the development and manufacture of biopharmaceuticals and for the laboratory scale separation of proteins for research and drug development; and
-- Discovery systems (24 percent of total Amersham sales in 2002) develops, manufactures and distributes instruments, reagents and software that are used for drug discovery, research and development with applications including protein and DNA analysis for genomics and proteomics, cellular screening and bioassays.