Pharmaceutical company intelligence reports from Espicom provide a full review of the company's activities together with five-year sales forecasts for its key products. The company's financial performance is covered in-depth, from its latest results to a complete analysis of its latest full fiscal year and an outlook for the future. A section on company strategy covers mergers, acquisitions and divestitures, key agreements, products and R&D. An overview of key products and R&D is followed by a comprehensive review of the company's product portfolio and research and development pipeline by therapeutic area. In addition, supplementary appendices provide more in-depth information on financials, agreements and corporate events. Established in 1891, Merck & Co discovers, develops, manufactures and markets vaccines and pharmaceutical medicines to address unmet medical needs. The company operates on a global basis and is represented in more than 200 countries. Merck's headquarters are based in Whitehouse Station, NJ.

In December 2005, Merck announced a new research and development model designed to increase productivity and improve the probability of success by prioritising the company's R&D resources on nine priority disease areas: Alzheimer's disease, atherosclerosis, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, novel vaccines, obesity, oncology, pain and sleep disorders. Within these therapeutic areas, Merck will commit resources to achieve research breadth and depth, and to develop best-in-class targeted and differentiated products.

Merck will also make focused investments to pursue specific mechanisms in the following selected disease areas: antibiotics, antifungals, antivirals (hepatitis C and HIV), asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, neurodegeneration, ophthalmology, osteoporosis, schizophrenia and stroke. In addition, the company will capitalise on selected opportunities outside these areas, by continuing to commercialise attractive clinical development candidates in the pipeline and by pursuing appropriate external licensing opportunities.

To create the most effective model for the development of a late-stage pipeline, Merck Research Laboratories will design and implement more efficient, global, consistent clinical development operational processes with the goal of reducing product development cycle times. Efficiencies generated in late-stage cycle times are expected to reduce the development process by as much as nine months by the end of 2007. Reductions in early development cycle times, in some cases from 3.5 years to two years, have already been achieved for critical products moving through the pipeline.

At the same time as enhancing its internal research capabilities, Merck recognises the important contribution of other biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies and has thus expanded its approach to external collaborations. In 2003, Merck completed 47 significant research and technology collaborations, compared with just ten deals in 1999, and this number continues to increase.