J&J's $13 Billion Gamble on Alza

J&J is paying a lot to buy Alza, nearly twice what Abbott had been willing to pay two years before. It's convinced that Alza's current drugs--mid-sized products today--can be blockbusters. Its gamble: that it can make Alza's modest sized drugs into blockbusters; and--for the first time in the drug industry--to make a captive drug delivery capability into a productive R&D engine.