THE new chief executive at Astra Zeneca will use this week’s results to spell out a new outward-looking policy on acquisitions and product-licensing as he seeks to rebuild the company’s drugs pipeline.

David Brennan, the American who replaced the long-serving Sir Tom McKillop at the start of this month, needs to find new medicines to sustain the company’s growth. Astra Zeneca was badly hit by a series of setbacks at the end of 2004, which damaged the prospects of two potential blockbusters, the cancer drug Iressa and the blood-thinning agent Exanta.

Brennan’s new approach to product acquisitions addresses a criticism that some levelled at McKillop — that as a scientist, he was too wedded to the company’s in-house research projects and suffered from a “not invented here” syndrome.

Brennan was the catalyst for a flurry of four deals in December. This began when Astra Zeneca struck a £195m agreement with Protherics, a British firm, to acquire rights to CytoFab, an anti-sepsis product.

It then agreed to pay up to $1 billion (£565m) in licensing and milestone payments for a heart-disease treatment developed by AtheroGenics of America. The following day, it bought Kudos Pharmaceuticals, a private cancer-therapy firm, for $210m. A few days later, it committed $300m to developing an Alzheimer’s disease treatment with Targacept.

The need for fresh products was underlined two weeks ago when an American court overturned the patents that protected Toprol XL, a treatment for high blood pressure that had American sales of $1.3 billion last year. Astra Zeneca is appealing against the verdicts.

This latest setback brought an end to the strong rise in Astra Zeneca’s share price, up about 40% last year. The shares closed at £27.21 on Friday, up from about £20 a year ago.

Full-year results on Thursday are expected to show a strong increase in operating profits to $6.5 billion on sales of $23.9 billion. Astra Zeneca has benefited from lower development spending and a reduction in other costs.

According to the consensus among City analysts, fourth-quarter operating profits will be about $1.7 billion on sales of $6.2 billion. Sales growth is heavily dependent on Seroquel, a schizophrenia drug, and Nexium for ulcers. Both of these products face patent challenges.

Investors will also be looking out for an update on Crestor, the anti-cholesterol pill that has been dogged by bad publicity, including a pointed attack by a senior scientist at the US Food and Drug Administration.

Since the problems at the end of 2004, John Patterson has taken over as development director with a mandate to improve efficiency and tighten up the company’s regulatory function. Astra Zeneca hopes to raise the number of candidate drugs by 30% by 2008.

Brennan is the first non-scientist to head the Mayfair-based drugs company.

Explore Health

• Expert Advice

• Health Features

• Mental Health

• Alternative Medicine

• Child Health

• Health Club