Celgene - company to watch

At the end of June 2010, Celgene bought Abraxis Bioscience located here in Phoenix, Arizona for $2.9 billion. This was a huge deal for biotech/pharma industry in Arizona. Yesterday, Celgene announced the final results from a phase III study of ABRAXANE (acquired through Abaxis' aquisition), a drug in combination with carboplatin for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) at the 2011's American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting. Though Abraxane doesn't significantly improve progession-free survival, Celgene still plans to submit a sNDA (supplemental New Drug Application) for first-line treatment of patients with advanced NSCLC.

So, why watch Celgene? For one thing, Celgene has 25 other drugs in late phase clinical trials. Most importantly, the purchase of Abraxis also gave Celgene the technology behind Abraxane, nab-driven chemotherapy. Added to this, Celgene's Phoenix location is hiring.

http://www.celgene.com/careers/pharmaceutical-us-job-openings.aspx

There are twelve positions listed since mid April, including a director of plant engineering.

The only question is: would there be skilled workers to fill these positions and support Celgene's clean lab and tight QC environment?