Cephalon
| Subsidiary of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries | |
| Industry | Biotechnology, Biopharmaceutical |
| Founded | 1987 |
| Headquarters | Frazer, Pennsylvania, United States |
|
Key people
|
J. Kevin Buchi, CEO |
| Products | medical development (Central nervous system, oncology) |
|
Number of employees
|
3,726 (as of December 31, 2010) |
| Website | www |
Cephalon, Inc. was a U.S. biopharmaceutical company co-founded in 1987 by Frank Baldino, Jr, pharmacologist, Michael Lewis, neuroscientist and James C. Kauer, organic chemist, all three former scientists with the DuPont Company. Baldino served as the company's chairman and chief executive officer until his death in December 2010. The company's name comes from the adjective "cephalic" meaning "related to the head or brain," and it was established primarily to pursue treatments for neurodegenerative diseases.
In the early years, Cephalon initially avoided involving itself in activities that would require maintaining a sales staff, managing clinical trials, and shepherding new drugs through the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval process. With no product to sell, Cephalon's only asset was its scientific expertise. That expertise proved sufficient to attract investors, and the company managed to fund its operations through research grants and contracts with larger pharmaceutical firms.
Sales revenues reached $2.8 billion in 2010, ranking Cephalon among the leading biopharmaceutical companies in the world. In 2006, industry publication MedAd News named the company one of the ten most respected biotechnology firms in the world. Cephalon employs more than 3,700.
Cephalon was first included in the Fortune 1000 list of U.S. companies based upon annual revenues for 2006.
On May 2, 2011, Teva announced its acquisition of Cephalon.
The company's early research efforts were focused on the development of IGF-1, an insulin-like growth factor, under a collaboration with Chiron Corporation to treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's Disease, but the product has never been approved.
The company developed and commercialized products for the treatment of sleep disorders, pain, addiction and cancer, establishing the "wake franchise" on the basis of Provigil (Modafinil) and later Nuvigil, with the R-enantiomer of modafinil. In addition to conducting research on kinase inhibitors and other small molecules, it has licensed compounds and acquired both products and other companies, including CIMA Labs, Anesta, and Laboratoire Lafon. It was from the latter company that Cephalon obtained the rights to modafinil, which it marketed under the trade name Provigil for the treatment of excessive daytime sleepiness associated with narcolepsy, sleep apnea and shift work sleep disorder. Sales of Provigil reached nearly one billion dollars in 2008, by which time the company had acquired Lafon.
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