Abbott Laboratories is an American multinational medical devices and health care company with headquarters in Abbott Park, Illinois, United States. The company was founded by Chicago physician Wallace Calvin Abbott in 1888 to formulate known drugs; today, it sells medical devices, diagnostics, branded generic medicines and nutritional products.
It split off its research-based pharmaceuticals business into AbbVie in 2013. The firm has also been present in India for over 100 years through its subsidiary Abbott India Limited, and it is currently India’s largest healthcare products company.
The company’s milestones:
1888: Dr. Wallace Calvin Abbott begins manufacturing alkaloid pills.
1894: Incorporated as the Abbott Alkaloidal Company. Abbott is a medical publisher as well as a manufacturer.
1900: Abbott incorporates his firm as Abbott Alkaloidal Company.
1907: Expansion outside the United States for the first time with an office in London, England.
1915: Company changes its name to Abbott Laboratories.
1922: Development of Butyn by scientists Dr. Ernest Volwiler and Dr. Roger Adams, the first in a long line of breakthrough anesthetics to come from company.
1929: Abbott goes public with a listing on the Chicago Stock Exchange.
1936: Company introduces the anesthetic sodium pentothal.
1942: Abbott joins a consortium of pharmaceutical makers, at the behest of the U.S. Government, to ramp up production of penicillin for wartime use. Together we increase production more than 20,000%.
1952: Company launches a new antibiotic, Erythrocin.
1964: Abbott acquires M & R Dietetic Laboratories, maker of Similac baby formula.
1967: New president Edward J. Ledder begins a diversification into consumer products, including Sucaryl, a cyclamate sugar substitute.
1970: FDA bans the sale of cyclamates.
1971: Abbott is forced to recall 3.4 million bottles of intravenous solution.
1977: Company forms joint venture with Takeda Chemical Industries, Ltd. of Japan called TAP Pharmaceuticals Inc.
1985: Abbott develops the first diagnostic test for AIDS.
1987: Abbott’s Hytrin is approved by the FDA for the treatment of hypertension.
1991: Clorithromycin, an antibiotic, is introduced.
2000: FDA approves the AIDS drug Kaletra; Abbott agrees to acquire the Knoll Pharmaceutical Co. unit of BASF AG for $6.9 billion in cash.
2006: Launch of the Xience V drug-eluting stent. It goes on to become the market leader.
2010: The company continues focus on globalism as it becomes the largest pharmaceutical company in India, the world’s second-largest country by population.
2013: Beginning of a new era for Abbott, as a more global, consumer-focused company than ever before, it created a new, Fortune 200 corporation, AbbVie, from the company’s former proprietary pharmaceutical business.
2014: Abbott establishes a strong new expression of its corporate identity with”Life. To The Fullest.”
2016: Abbott launches the first systems in its Alinity series, a family of diagnostics and informatics systems that represent a major leap forward in terms of reliability, cost, capacity, space efficiency, and ease of use.
2020: Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Abbott quickly launches multiple new COVID-19 diagnostic tests, from assays that run on high-throughput instruments capable of handling large volumes of tests at once, to self-contained point-of-care devices that deliver reliable, on-the-spot results, fast.
According to referenceforbusiness.com; en.wikipedia.org. Source of photo: internet
