Research isn't random

Four years ago, Biogen Inc. had one of the less exciting pipelines in the biotech business, and investors wondered whether it would ever put together a substantial pipeline beyond interferon alpha and beta. A bit more than a year after merging with Idec Pharmaceuticals Corp., it finally looks like "there's a there there."

Biogen Idec Inc. has six novel compounds in the clinic and one awaiting approval, mostly from the Biogen side. The Biogen side also has put together a discovery engine built on mechanism rather than disease, thus cutting across multiple therapeutic areas. And while the in-house theme has been biologics, the first homegrown small molecules based on this approach have reached preclinical development...