Bristol-Myers

Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (BMS) is an American pharmaceutical company, headquartered in New York City. Bristol-Myers Squibb manufactures prescription pharmaceuticals and biologics in several therapeutic areas, including cancer, HIV/AIDS, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hepatitis, rheumatoid arthritis and psychiatric disorders. BMS' primary R&D sites are located in Lawrence, New Jersey (formerly Squibb, near Princeton), Hopewell Township and New Brunswick, New Jersey; with other sites in East Syracuse, New York, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Swords, Ireland, Braine-l'Alleud, Belgium, Tokyo, Japan, and Bangalore, India. BMS previously had an R&D site in Wallingford, Connecticut (formerly Bristol-Myers). The Squibb corporation was founded in 1858 by Edward Robinson Squibb in Brooklyn, New York. Squibb was known as a vigorous advocate of quality control and high purity standards within the fledgling pharmaceutical industry of his time, at one point self-publishing an alternative to the U.S. Pharmacopeia (Squibb's Ephemeris of Materia Medica) after failing to convince the American Medical Association to incorporate higher purity standards. Mentions of the Materia Medica, Squibb products, and Edward Squibb's opinion on the utility and best method of preparation for various medicants are found in many medical papers of the late 1800s. Squibb Corporation served as a major supplier of medical goods to the Union Army during the American Civil War, providing portable medical kits containing morphine, surgical anesthetics, and quinine for the treatment of malaria (which was endemic in most of the eastern United States at that time). In 1887, Hamilton College graduates William McLaren Bristol and John Ripley Myers purchased the Clinton Pharmaceutical company of Clinton, New York. In 1898, they decided to rename it Bristol, Myers and Company. Following Myers' death in 1899, Bristol changed the name to the Bristol-Myers Corporation. The first nationally recognized product was Sal Hepatica, a laxative mineral salt in 1903. Its second national success was Ipana toothpaste, from 1901 through the 1960s. Other divisions were Clairol (hair colors and haircare) and Drackett (household products such as Windex and Drano). In 1943, Bristol-Myers acquired Cheplin Biological Laboratories, a producer of acidophilus milk in East Syracuse, New York, and converted the plant to produce penicillin for the World War II Allied forces. After the war, the company renamed the plant Bristol Laboratories in 1945 and entered the civilian antibiotics market, where it faced competition from Squibb, which had opened the world's largest penicillin plant in 1944 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Penicillin production at the East Syracuse plant was ended in 2005, when it became less expensive to produce overseas, but the facility continues to be used for the manufacturing process development and production of other biologic medicines for clinical trials and commercial use.