Nihon Eisai Co. Ltd. was established in 1941. In 1944, merger with Sakuragaoka Research Laboratory resulted in creation of Eisai Co. Ltd. The American subsidiary of the company, Eisai Inc., was established in 1995. On November 25, 1996, Eisai received approval from the United States Food and Drug Administration for [|Aricept], a drug discovered in the company's labs and co-marketed with Pfizer. Three years later in 1999, the company received USFDA approval for Aciphex, a drug co-marketed with Johnson & Johnson. In September 2006, the company acquired four oncology products from Ligand Pharmaceuticals. In April 2007, Eisai acquired Exton, Pennsylvania-based Morphotek, a company developing therapeutic monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, and infectious diseases. In December 2007, Eisai acquired MGI Pharma, a company specializing in oncology, for US$3.9 billion. This event brought Dacogen, Aloxi, Hexalen for ovarian cancer, and the Gliadel Wafer for brain tumors into the Eisai product portfolio. In 2009, Eisai received the Corporate Award from the National Organization for Rare Disorders for the development of Banzel.
Locations
Eisai Co., Ltd. is based in Tokyo, Japan, while its American subsidiary Eisai Inc. is headquartered in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey. Eisai maintains medical research headquarters in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey as well as locations in Japan, the United Kingdom, the Research Triangle in North Carolina, and Massachusetts where the Eisai Research Institute and the Genetics Guided Dementia Discovery institute are based. The company has manufacturing sites in Japan, North Carolina, Maryland, Bogor, Suzhou, Tainan, Visakhapatnam and Hatfield, Hertfordshire. Eisai has marketing operations in 19 European countries as well as the Asia-Pacific region.
Products
Some of the key products that Eisai produces or markets with partners include:
Aricept accounted for 40% of Eisai's revenue as of March 2010. The main competitor to Aricept is a generic formulation from Ranbaxy Labs. Eisai has pursued development of alternative formulations in order to extend the marketable lifetime of the product.
