R&D budget: $4.23B (€3.09B)
Change over 08: -12%
Income spent on R&D: 13.5%

Some of AstraZeneca's ($AZN) biggest R&D changes still lie ahead of the company. At the beginning of this year AZ outlined plans to hack a billion dollars, and many, many jobs, out of its R&D work by the end of 2014.

Earlier this year AstraZeneca completed a complex grading process, assigning scores to R&D programs based on the prevalence of the disease they were targeting, their chances of success and the likelihood that payers would properly reimburse them for the therapies once they made it to the market. Here's what didn't make the list: thrombosis, acid reflux, ovarian and bladder cancers, systemic scleroderma, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety, hepatitis C and vaccines other than respiratory syncytial virus and influenza.

RSV and flu, of course, are the special province of MedImmune, its independently operated Maryland-based biologics arm that has its own active pipeline and partnering projects underway. In the meantime, the entire R&D side of AstraZeneca's business is being hammered into a radically new shape.

AstraZeneca has hired for one R&D post this year, though. It managed to gain the services of Martin Mackay, who bolted from the odd pairing he faced with Mikael Dolsten from Wyeth after their big merger with Pfizer.