Management Report Operations and Business Environment Research and Development 
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
Fresenius focuses its R & D efforts on its core activities. These are:
- Dialysis and other extracorporeal therapies
- Infusion and nutrition therapies as well as related medical devices
- Antibody therapies.
Apart from products, we are concentrating on developing optimized or completely new therapies, treatment methods, and services. In 2007, we successfully continued numerous projects, and several new products were launched.
Fresenius Medical Care continued to work hard to improve dialysis therapies. Our projects’ main focus was on the further development of dialyzers and on market-specific adaptations for our new 5008 hemodialysis machine. Other R & D efforts were directed toward development of a global cycler for peritoneal dialysis and extracorporeal liver support.
Fresenius Kabi concentrated on developing new products and product enhancements in its core areas of infusion therapy, clinical nutrition, and medical devices. Main developments included a new product variant for blood volume substitution and advances in intravenously administered drugs. There was also a further enhancement of three-chamber bags for parenteral nutrition and patient-specific developments for enteral nutrition.
Important projects at Fresenius Biotech involved trifunctional antibody therapies: phase II clinical studies to treat patients with breast and gastric cancer were continued. A phase II study in the indication of ovarian cancer was started. Following the successful completion of the phase II/III pivotal study in the indication of malignant ascites, the marketing authorization application was dispatched to the EMEA, the European Medicines Agency, at the end of December 2007.
Expenditure on research and development was € 184 million in 2007, 10 % more than the € 167 million spent the previous year. As in 2006, we invested about 5 % of our product sales in R & D. The pie chart shows the R & D expenses by business segment. In 2007, Fresenius Medical Care increased R & D spending by 20 % and Fresenius Kabi by 12 %. In the segment Corporate/Others R & D expenses were on previous year’s level, and were mainly attributable to the clinical development of trifunctional antibodies at Fresenius Biotech. Detailed figures are included in the segment reporting.
As of December 31, 2007, 999 people were employed in research and development in the Group (December 31, 2006: 911). Of that number, 357 were employed at Fresenius Medical Care (2006: 356), 550 at Fresenius Kabi (2006: 467), and 92 at Fresenius Biotech (2006: 88).
The table shows a historical comparison of R & D expenses and the number of employees working in R & D:
| 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| R & D expenses (in million €) | 184 | 167 | 149 | 133 | 121 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| R & D employees | 999 | 911 | 856 | 819 | 790 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Our main research sites are in Europe. Production-related research is also carried out in the United States and in China. Our research and development projects are mainly conducted in-house; external research is commissioned only on a limited scale.