"A couple of years ago Celltech made the strategic decision to be a self-financed company, " Ando says.

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For some, Celltech (nyse: CLL - news - people ) might seem a less-than-obvious choice.

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Managers from Celltech, for instance, have gone on to start or to run smaller operations such as Hexagen and Quadrant.

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Ando says he didn't know much about Celltech until Pharmacia struck a deal to co-develop a rheumatoid arthritis drug with the British firm.

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Celltech's sales come mainly from aging products--the biggest is a cough medicine--that it bought to allow it to keep running without infusions of venture capital.

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Already, he thinks Celltech has the building blocks for that success.

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Celltech's low U.S. profile is a problem, he admits.

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At this point, Celltech appears to have won.

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While a few firms have come unstuck over drugs faltering in clinical trials, a solid core of big, successful firms such as Celltech and Shire is reassuring investors that Britain's biotechnology sector is a better long-term bet than, say, Germany's less mature, and less profitable, industry.

ECONOMIST: Biotechnology

But Berkshire, England-based Celltech is thinly traded and little talked about in the U.S. Lately, it has mostly made it into the press because of a bidding war with Cambridge Antibody Technology (nasdaq: CATG - news - people ) for proteomics pioneer Oxford Glycosciences.

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