Pfizer
Encyclopedia
Pfizer, Inc. (ˈfaɪzər) is an American multinational
pharmaceutical corporation. The company is based in New York City, New York with its research headquarters in Groton
, Connecticut, United States. Pfizer produces Lipitor (atorvastatin
, used to lower blood cholesterol); the neuropathic pain/fibromyalgia drug Lyrica (pregabalin
); the oral antifungal medication Diflucan (fluconazole
), the antibiotic Zithromax (azithromycin
), Viagra (sildenafil
) for erectile dysfunction
, and the anti-inflammatory Celebrex (celecoxib
) (also known as Celebra in some countries outside the USA and Canada, mainly in South America). Its headquarters are in Midtown Manhattan
, New York City.
Pfizer's shares were made a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average
on April 8, 2004.
Pfizer pleaded guilty in 2009 to the largest health care fraud in U.S. history and received the largest criminal penalty ever levied for illegal marketing of four of its drugs. Called a repeat offender
, this was Pfizer's fourth such settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice in the previous ten years.
On January 26, 2009, Pfizer agreed to buy pharmaceutical giant Wyeth
for US$68 billion, a deal financed with cash, shares and loans. The deal was completed on October 15, 2009.
and Charles Erhardt (originally from Ludwigsburg, Germany) who launched a fine chemicals business, Charles Pfizer and Company, from a building at the intersection of Harrison Avenue and Bartlett Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
in 1849. There, they produced an antiparasitic called santonin
. This was an immediate success, although it was the production of citric acid
that really kick-started Pfizer's growth in the 1880s. Pfizer continued to buy property to expand its lab and factory on the block bounded by Bartlett Street; Harrison Avenue; Gerry Street; and Flushing Avenue
. That facility was used by Pfizer until 2005, when Pfizer closed its original plant along with several others. Pfizer established its original administrative headquarters at 81 Maiden Lane in Manhattan. By 1906, sales totaled nearly $3 million.
World War I caused a shortage of calcium citrate
that Pfizer imported from Italy for the manufacture of citric acid, and the company began a search for an alternative supply. Pfizer chemists learned of a fungus that ferments sugar to citric acid and were able to commercialize production of citric acid from this source in 1919. As a result Pfizer developed expertise in fermentation
technology. These skills were applied to the mass production of penicillin
during World War II
, in response to a need from the U.S. government. The antibiotic
was needed to treat injured Allied soldiers. In fact, most of the penicillin that went ashore with the troops on D-Day
was made by Pfizer.
Following the success of penicillin production in the 1940s, penicillin became very inexpensive and Pfizer made very little profit for its efforts. As a result, in the late 1940s Pfizer decided to search for new antibiotics with greater profit potential. The discovery and commercialization of Terramycin (oxytetracycline)
by Pfizer in 1950 moved the company on the path of change from a manufacturer of fine chemicals to a research-based pharmaceutical company. To augment its research in fermentation technology, Pfizer began a program to discover drugs through chemical synthesis. Pfizer also established an animal health division in 1959 with an 700 acres (2.8 km²) farm and research facility in Terre Haute, Indiana
.
By the 1950s, Pfizer was established in Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, Iran, Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, Turkey and the United Kingdom. In 1960, the Company moved its medical research laboratory operations to a new facility in Groton, Connecticut. In 1980 Pfizer launched Feldene (piroxicam)
, a prescription anti-inflammatory
medication that became Pfizer's first product to reach a total of a billion United States dollars in sales.
During the 1980s and 1990s Pfizer underwent a period of growth sustained by the discovery and marketing of Zoloft, Lipitor, Norvasc, Zithromax, Aricept, Diflucan, and Viagra. Pfizer has recently grown by mergers, including those with Warner–Lambert (2000), with Pharmacia
(2003), and with Wyeth
(2009).
A July 2010 article in BusinessWeek reported that Pfizer was seeing more success in its battle against makers of counterfeit
prescription drugs by pursuing civil lawsuits rather than criminal prosecution. Pfizer has hired customs and narcotics experts from all over the globe to track down fakes and assemble evidence that can be used to pursue civil suits for trademark infringement
. Since 2007, Pfizer has spent $3.3 million on investigations and legal fees and recovered about $5.1 million, with another $5 million tied up in ongoing cases.
In February 2011 it was announced that it was to close its research and development facility in Kent
, which employs 2,400 people.
On April 2011 Pfizer Inc has agreed to sell their world's largest maker of hard capsules Capsugel
unit for about $2.38 billion to private equity firm KKR & Co. The cash will be used for a part of share buyback about $5 billion planned for 2011.
Current members of the board of directors of Pfizer are: Michael S. Brown, M. Anthony Burns
, Robert Burt
, Don Cornwell, William H. Gray, Frances D. Fergusson
, Constance Horner, William R. Howell
, Stanley Ikenberry, Ian Read
(chairman), George Lorch, John P. Mascotte, Dana Mead, Ruth J. Simmons, and William Steere.
Pfizer has four divisions: Human Health ($44.28B in 2005 sales), Consumer Healthcare ($3.87B in 2005 sales), Animal Health ($2.2B in 2005 sales), and Corporate Groups (which includes legal, finance, and HR). On June 26, 2006, Pfizer announced that it would sell its Consumer Healthcare unit (manufacturer of Listerine, Nicorette
, Visine
, Sudafed
and Neosporin
) to Johnson & Johnson
for $16.6 billion.
. Parke–Davis was founded in Detroit in 1866, by Hervey Parke and George Davis. Warner–Lambert took over Parke–Davis in 1976, and acquired Wilkinson Sword
in 1993 and Agouron in 1999. In 2000 Pfizer took over Warner–Lambert.
The Upjohn
Company was a pharmaceutical manufacturing firm founded in 1886 in Kalamazoo, Michigan
by Dr. William E. Upjohn
, an 1875 graduate of the University of Michigan
medical school. The company was originally formed to make friable pills, which were specifically designed to be easily digested.
In 1995, Upjohn merged with Pharmacia
, to form Pharmacia & Upjohn. Pharmacia
was created in April 2000 through the merger of Pharmacia & Upjohn with the Monsanto Company and its G.D. Searle unit. The merged company was based in Peapack, New Jersey. The agricultural division was spun off from Pharmacia, as Monsanto, in preparation for the close of the acquisition by Pfizer.
In 2002, Pfizer merged with Pharmacia. The merger was again driven in part by the desire to acquire full rights to a product, this time Celebrex (celecoxib
), the COX-2 selective inhibitor previously jointly marketed by Searle (acquired by Pharmacia) and Pfizer. In the ensuing years, Pfizer commenced with a massive restructuring resulting in numerous site closures and loss of jobs including: Terre Haute, IN; Holland, MI; Groton, CT; Brooklyn, NY; Sandwich, UK and Puerto Rico.
In 2008, Pfizer announced 275 job cuts at the Kalamazoo manufacturing facility. Kalamazoo was previously the world headquarters for the Upjohn Company.
, California and acquired by Pharmacia
in 1999. The company pioneered the use of ATP-mimetic small molecules to block signal transduction. After the Pfizer merger, the SUGEN site was shut down in 2003, with the loss of over 300 jobs, and the transfer of several programs to Pfizer. These included sunitinib
(Sutent), which was approved for human use by the FDA in January 2006, passed $1 bn in annual revenues for Pfizer in 2010. A related compound SU11654 (Toceranib
) was also approved for canine tumors, and the ALK inhibitor Crizotinib
also grew out of a SUGEN program
for a combined US$68 billion in cash, shares and loans, including some US$22.5 billion lent by five major Wall Street banks. The deal would cement Pfizer's place as the largest pharmaceutical company in the world, with the merged company generating over US$20 billion in cash each year, and represents the largest corporate merger since AT&T
and BellSouth
's US$70 billion deal in March 2006. Wyeth's management team is expected to depart following the merger. The combined company could save US$4 billion annually through the streamlining of operations; however, as part of the deal, both companies must repatriate billions of dollars in revenue from foreign sources to the United States, which will result in higher tax costs. The acquisition was completed on October 15, 2009 making Wyeth a wholly owned subsidiary of Pfizer.
’s Gary Pisano told The Wall Street Journal
:
The Warner–Lambert and Pharmacia mergers do not appear to have achieved gains for shareholders so it is unclear who will benefit from the Wyeth–Pfizer merger to many critics.
for $3.6 billion in cash or $14.25 per share: an approximately 40% premium over King’s closing share price 11th october 2010.
, a drug that increases production of HDL
, or "good cholesterol", which reduces LDL
thought to be correlated to heart disease, was cancelled in December 2006. During a Phase III clinical trial involving 15,000 patients there were more deaths than expected in the group that took the medicine, and a 60% increase in deaths was seen among patients taking torcetrapib plus Lipitor versus Lipitor alone. There was no suggestion these results called into question the safety of Lipitor. Pfizer lost nearly $1 billion invested developing the failed drug, and the market value of the company plummeted in the aftermath.
The following is a list of key prescription pharmaceutical products. The names shown are all registered trademarks of Pfizer Inc.
In addition to marketing branded pharmaceutials Pfizer is involved in the manufacture and sale of generics
. In the US it does this through its Greenstone subsidiary which it acquired as part of the acquisition of Pharmacia. Pfizer also has a licensing deal in place with Aurobindo which grants the former access to a variety of oral solid generic products.
The following is a partial list of Animal Health brands manufactured by Pfizer:
, Connecticut, for expanded facilities led to the Kelo v. New London case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court's 2005 decision in Kelo v. City of New London handed local governments the right to seize private property for economic development, i. e., offices, a hotel to enhance Pfizer Inc.'s nearby corporate facility. However, following the completion of the aforementioned Wyeth merger, Pfizer announced it will close its research and development headquarters in New London, Connecticut, moving employees to nearby Groton
.
-containing insulation products until the early 1970s. Asbestos victims and Pfizer have been negotiating a settlement deal which calls for Pfizer to pay $430 million to 80 percent of existing plaintiffs. It will also place an additional $535 million into an asbestos settlement trust that will compensate future plaintiffs as well as the remaining 20 percent of current plaintiffs with claims against Pfizer and Quigley. The compensation deal is worth $965 million all up. Of that $535 million, $405 million is in a 40-year note from Pfizer, while $100 million will come from insurance policies.
. Approximately 500 people died when defective valves failed and, in 1994, the United States ruled against Pfizer for ~$200 million.
, a Washington D.C.-based coalition of over 400 major companies and NGOs that advocates for a larger International Affairs Budget, which funds American diplomatic, humanitarian, and development efforts abroad.
Pfizer is one of the single largest lobbying interests in United States politics. For example in the first 9 months of 2009 Pfizer spent over $16.3 million on lobbying US congressional lawmakers, making them the sixth largest lobbying interest in the US (following Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), which ranked fourth but also represents many of their interests). A spokeswoman for Pfizer said the company “wanted to make sure our voice is heard in this conversation” in regards to the companies expenditure of $25 million in 2010 to lobby health care reform.
Pfizer's primary interests are opposition of Congressional efforts to attach a prescription drug benefit to Medicare and opposition to generic drugs entering US markets. Pfizer also purportedly proposed a ban on all lawsuit
s against manufacturers
of body implant parts which was proposed in the United States Congress
as part of tort reform
legislation.
According to U.S. State Department cables released by the whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks
, Pfizer "lobbied against New Zealand getting a free trade
agreement with the United States because it objected to New Zealand’s restrictive drug buying rules and tried to get rid of New Zealand’s former health minister, Helen Clark
, in 1990.
strategies used to promote Neurontin for off-label use. In 1993, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved gabapentin
(Neurontin, Pfizer) only for treatment of seizures. Warner–Lambert, which merged with Pfizer in 2000, used activities not usually associated with sales promotion, including continuing medical education
and research, sponsored articles about the drug for the medical literature, and alleged suppression of unfavorable study results, to promote gabapentin. Within 5 years the drug was being widely used for the off-label treatment of pain and psychiatric conditions. In 2004, Warner–Lambert admitted to charges that it violated FDA regulations by promoting the drug for pain, psychiatric conditions, migraine, and other unapproved uses, and paid $430 million to resolve criminal and civil health care liability charges. Today it is a mainstay drug for migraines, even though it was not approved for such use in 2004.
announced that Pfizer had agreed to pay $2.3 billion to settle civil and criminal allegations that it had illegally marketed four drugs: Bextra, Geodon, Zyvox, and Lyrica "with the intent to defraud or mislead" by promoting the drugs for non-approved uses; this marks Pfizer's fourth such settlement in a decade. Pharmacia & Upjohn Company, Inc., a Pfizer subsidiary, agreed to plead guilty to mis-branded promotion of Bextra, a felony violation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. The criminal fine accounts for $1.3 billion of the settlement, and is the largest criminal penalty ever imposed in American history. Pfizer has entered an extensive corporate integrity agreement (CIA) with the Office of Inspector General and will be required to make substantial structural reforms within the company, and maintain the Pfizer website (www.pfizer.com/pmc) to track the company's post marketing commitments. Pfizer must also put a searchable database of all payments to physicians the company has made on the Pfizer website by March 31, 2010. In addition, two former employees were separately indicted and sentenced for their role in marketing of Bextra. A former District Sales manager was found guilty of obstruction of justice for destroying documents pertinent to the investigation, and a Regional Sales Manager pled guilty to the distribution of a mis-branded product.
The case is the largest civil settlement against a pharmaceutical company as well. Pfizer paid a $1 billion civil fine to settle allegations it had illegally promoted the drugs for uses that were not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and caused false claims
to be submitted to Federal and State programs including but not limited to Medicare
and Medicaid
. Under the False Claims Act
, damages can be assessed for violations of the federal Anti-Kickback statute, 42 U.S.C. § 1320a–7b(b) and the off-label marketing provision within the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act ("FDCA"), 21 U.S.C. §§301-97. Six whistle-blowers
will receive $102 million for their participation in the civil investigation, and John Kopchinski, a former sales representative, will receive $51.5 million for his allegations involving the marketing of Bextra.
CNN
reported that Pharmacia & Upjohn, not Pfizer itself, pleaded guilty because prosecutors thought Pfizer was "too big to nail." Companies convicted of major health care fraud are automatically barred from billing Medicare and Medicaid for their products. Prosecutors feared that Pfizer would collapse if it pleaded guilty, and felt that the risk of harm to patients was too great. A CNN investigation revealed that Pharmacia & Upjohn Company is little more than a shell corporation Pfizer uses to plead guilty; it was first created in 2007 as the defendant in a kickback case.
, trovafloxacin
, to approximately 200 children. Local Kano officials report that more than 50 children died in the experiment, while many others developed mental and physical deformities. In 2001, families of the children, as well as the governments of Kano and Nigeria, filed lawsuits regarding the treatment. Representing the government is Babatunde Irukera. According to news reports, "[r]esearchers did not obtain signed consent forms, and medical personnel said Pfizer did not tell parents their children were getting the experimental drug." The lawsuits also accuse Pfizer of using the outbreak to perform unapproved human testing, as well as allegedly under-dosing a control group being treated with traditional antibiotics in order to skew the results of the trial in favor of Trovan. Pfizer denied these claims, and subsequently produced an approval letter for testing from the Nigerian Ethics Committee. The Nigerian government insisted that it was a fake and a panel of Nigerian medical experts agreed that the letter had been concocted and backdated by the company's lead researcher in Kano. They went on to conclude that Pfizer never obtained authorization from the Nigerian government to give the unproven drug to children and infants.
In 2007, Pfizer published a Statement of Defense letter. The letter makes several claims, including that Pfizer donated 18 million in Nigerian Naira (NGN) (about $216,000 in 1996 US dollars (USD)) , that the drug's oral form was presented as safer and easier to administer, that the administration of Trovan saved lives, and that no unusual side effects, unrelated to meningitis, were observed after 4 weeks.
A more likely reason for Pfizer's insistence on the oral form is the result of testing trovafloxacin intravenously in 1995, which found that the drug precipitated in saline, making it ineffective in patients receiving IV fluids. This is inferred from an FDA Warning Letter
to ex-CEO William C. Steere, regarding Trovan's compatibility with saline etc., which was omitted from Trovan's labeling until January 1999, shortly after Pfizer received the letter.
In June 1999, the FDA released a public health statement warning against the use of Trovan except in life-or-death situations, due to high risk of liver failure. In some cases, liver damage occurred after only two days of treatment.
In June 2010 the US Supreme Court rejected Pfizer's appeal against a ruling allowing lawsuits by the Nigerian families to proceed.
In December 2010 WikiLeaks
released US diplomatic cables
, which indicate that Pfizer had "used dirty tricks to avoid clinical trial payout". The company had hired investigators to find evidence of corruption against the Nigerian attorney general to persuade him to drop legal action. Washington Post reporter Joe Stephens, who helped break the story in 2000, called these actions "dangerously close to blackmail." In response the company has released a press statement describing the allegations as "preposterous" and stating that they acted in good faith.
, a virus similar to the one that can lead to acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS."
, which was acquired by Pfizer, alleging that the company illegally marketed their drug Rapamune. Wyeth is targeted in the suit for off-label marketing, targeting specific doctors and medical facilities to increased sales of Rapamune, trying to get current transplant patients to change from their current transplant drugs to Rapamune and for specifically targeting African-Americans. According to the whistleblowers, Wyeth also provided doctors and hospitals with kickbacks to prescribe the drug in the form of grants, donations and other money. A US House of Representatives committee, led by Rep. Edolphus Towns is currently investigating Pfizer for these abuses.
, Michigan. The company has R&D labs in the following locations:
Groton
, Connecticut;
La Jolla, California;
South San Francisco
, California;
Cambridge
, Massachusetts;
Kalamazoo
, Michigan;
St. Louis
, Missouri. In La Jolla, Pfizer has 1,000 people with plans to create cancer drugs, a departure from the company's cardiovascular specialties.
The Sandwich
research center in England is currently closing.
Spending $8.1 billion in research & development (R&D) in 2007, Pfizer has the industry's largest pharmaceutical R&D organization: Pfizer Global Research and Development.
In 2007, Pfizer announced plans to close or sell on the Loughbeg API facility, located at Loughbeg, Ringaskiddy Co.Cork Ireland by mid to end of 2008
In 2007, Pfizer announced plans to completely close the Ann Arbor, Nagoya and Amboise Research facilities by the end of 2008, eliminating 2,160 jobs and idling the $300-million dollar Michigan facility, which had seen millions of dollars of expansion in recent years.
On June 18, 2007 Pfizer announced it will move the Sandwich
, England Animal Health Research (VMRD) division to Kalamazoo, Michigan
.
On February 1, 2011 Pfizer announced that it was to pull out of its UK Research and Development centre at Sandwich
, Kent, with the loss of 2,400 jobs.
On September 1, 2011 Pfizer announced that it has agreed to a 10-year lease of more than 180,000 square feet of research space from MIT in a building to be constructed at 610 Main Street South, just north of the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US. The space will house Pfizer’s Cardiovascular, Metabolic and Endocrine Disease Research Unit and its Neuroscience Research Unit — and Pfizer anticipates moving into the space once it is completed in late 2013.
Pipeline:
Pfizer has provided funding to the Competitive Enterprise Institute
released by the Human Rights Campaign
starting in 2004, the third year of the report. In 2007, Pfizer's Canadian division was named one of Canada's Top 100 Employers
, as published in Maclean's
magazine, the only research-based pharmaceutical company to receive this honor. In 2008, there was controversy, including inquiries from members of Congress, around Pfizer's practice of replacing US workers with H-1b guest workers
"In the United States, 46 percent of all new HIV/AIDS cases occur in the South. From 2003 to 2006 the Pfizer Foundation has funded 23 innovative HIV/AIDS prevention programs and strengthened the capacity of community-based organizations to reach and serve their communities." Since 2003, Pfizer has committed a $3 million grant toward supporting the Southern HIV/AIDS Prevention Initiative.
However, there were criticisms of the way Pfizer was testing its AIDS drug. "The European AIDS Treatment Group (EATG), collection of activists from 31 European Countries, said the design of the trial for Pfizer's CCR5 inhibitor maraviroc
(previously known as UK-427,857) is putting people with HIV infection at unnecessary risk of developing AIDS."
On June 20, 2007, Pfizer received an approvable letter for maraviroc from the FDA advisory board. The letter was a product of expedited review of the novel HIV compound.
In 2001, Pfizer asked the U.S. government to pressure the Brazilian government against issuing compulsory licenses for the patents on the AIDS drug nelfinavir.
In November 2009 Pfizer formed a joint venture with GlaxoSmithKline to create ViiV Healthcare
. Viiv Healthcare received all of Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline's HIV assets.
Multinational corporation
A multi national corporation or enterprise , is a corporation or an enterprise that manages production or delivers services in more than one country. It can also be referred to as an international corporation...
pharmaceutical corporation. The company is based in New York City, New York with its research headquarters in Groton
Groton, Connecticut
Groton is a town located on the Thames River in New London County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 39,907 at the 2000 census....
, Connecticut, United States. Pfizer produces Lipitor (atorvastatin
Atorvastatin
Atorvastatin , sold by Pfizer under the trade name Lipitor, is a member of the drug class known as statins, used for lowering blood cholesterol. It also stabilizes plaque and prevents strokes through anti-inflammatory and other mechanisms...
, used to lower blood cholesterol); the neuropathic pain/fibromyalgia drug Lyrica (pregabalin
Pregabalin
Pregabalin is an anticonvulsant drug used for neuropathic pain and as an adjunct therapy for partial seizures with or without secondary generalization in adults. It has also been found effective for generalized anxiety disorder and is approved for this use in the European Union. It was designed...
); the oral antifungal medication Diflucan (fluconazole
Fluconazole
Fluconazole is a triazole antifungal drug used in the treatment and prevention of superficial and systemic fungal infections. In a bulk powder form, it appears as a white crystalline powder, and it is very slightly soluble in water and soluble in alcohol. It is commonly marketed under the trade...
), the antibiotic Zithromax (azithromycin
Azithromycin
Azithromycin is an azalide, a subclass of macrolide antibiotics. Azithromycin is one of the world's best-selling antibiotics...
), Viagra (sildenafil
Sildenafil
Sildenafil citrate, sold as Viagra, Revatio and under various other trade names, is a drug used to treat erectile dysfunction and pulmonary arterial hypertension . It was originally developed by British scientists and then brought to market by the US-based pharmaceutical company Pfizer...
) for erectile dysfunction
Erectile dysfunction
Erectile dysfunction is sexual dysfunction characterized by the inability to develop or maintain an erection of the penis during sexual performance....
, and the anti-inflammatory Celebrex (celecoxib
Celecoxib
Celecoxib INN is a sulfa non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug and selective COX-2 inhibitor used in the treatment of osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, acute pain, painful menstruation and menstrual symptoms, and to reduce numbers of colon and rectum polyps in patients with familial...
) (also known as Celebra in some countries outside the USA and Canada, mainly in South America). Its headquarters are in Midtown Manhattan
Midtown Manhattan
Midtown Manhattan, or simply Midtown, is an area of Manhattan, New York City home to world-famous commercial zones such as Rockefeller Center, Broadway, and Times Square...
, New York City.
Pfizer's shares were made a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average
Dow Jones Industrial Average
The Dow Jones Industrial Average , also called the Industrial Average, the Dow Jones, the Dow 30, or simply the Dow, is a stock market index, and one of several indices created by Wall Street Journal editor and Dow Jones & Company co-founder Charles Dow...
on April 8, 2004.
Pfizer pleaded guilty in 2009 to the largest health care fraud in U.S. history and received the largest criminal penalty ever levied for illegal marketing of four of its drugs. Called a repeat offender
Recidivism
Recidivism is the act of a person repeating an undesirable behavior after they have either experienced negative consequences of that behavior, or have been treated or trained to extinguish that behavior...
, this was Pfizer's fourth such settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice in the previous ten years.
On January 26, 2009, Pfizer agreed to buy pharmaceutical giant Wyeth
Wyeth
Wyeth, formerly one of the companies owned by American Home Products Corporation , was a pharmaceutical company. The company was based in Madison, New Jersey, USA...
for US$68 billion, a deal financed with cash, shares and loans. The deal was completed on October 15, 2009.
History
Pfizer is named after German-American cousins Charles PfizerCharles Pfizer
Charles Pfizer was a German chemist who immigrated to the United States in the early 1840s and founded the Pfizer Inc. pharmaceutical company in 1849 as Charles Pfizer & Co. He remained at its head until 1900, when the company was incorporated and Charles Pfizer, Jr. became its first president....
and Charles Erhardt (originally from Ludwigsburg, Germany) who launched a fine chemicals business, Charles Pfizer and Company, from a building at the intersection of Harrison Avenue and Bartlett Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Williamsburg is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, bordering Greenpoint to the north, Bedford-Stuyvesant to the south, Bushwick to the east and the East River to the west. The neighborhood is part of Brooklyn Community Board 1. The neighborhood is served by the NYPD's 90th ...
in 1849. There, they produced an antiparasitic called santonin
Santonin
Santonin is a drug which was widely used in the past as an anthelminthic, a drug that expels parasitic worms from the body, by either killing or stunning them. Santonin was formerly listed in U.S...
. This was an immediate success, although it was the production of citric acid
Citric acid
Citric acid is a weak organic acid. It is a natural preservative/conservative and is also used to add an acidic, or sour, taste to foods and soft drinks...
that really kick-started Pfizer's growth in the 1880s. Pfizer continued to buy property to expand its lab and factory on the block bounded by Bartlett Street; Harrison Avenue; Gerry Street; and Flushing Avenue
Flushing Avenue
Flushing Avenue is an approximately five mile street running through northern Brooklyn and west central Queens beginning at the termination of Nassau Street, on the northern fringe of Fort Greene, Brooklyn, and ending where it merges with Grand Avenue, in Maspeth. It divides the neighborhood of...
. That facility was used by Pfizer until 2005, when Pfizer closed its original plant along with several others. Pfizer established its original administrative headquarters at 81 Maiden Lane in Manhattan. By 1906, sales totaled nearly $3 million.
World War I caused a shortage of calcium citrate
Calcium citrate
Calcium citrate is the calcium salt of citric acid. It is commonly used as a food additive , usually as a preservative, but sometimes for flavor. In this sense, it is similar to sodium citrate. Calcium citrate is also used as a water softener because the citrate ions can chelate unwanted metal...
that Pfizer imported from Italy for the manufacture of citric acid, and the company began a search for an alternative supply. Pfizer chemists learned of a fungus that ferments sugar to citric acid and were able to commercialize production of citric acid from this source in 1919. As a result Pfizer developed expertise in fermentation
Fermentation (biochemistry)
Fermentation is the process of extracting energy from the oxidation of organic compounds, such as carbohydrates, using an endogenous electron acceptor, which is usually an organic compound. In contrast, respiration is where electrons are donated to an exogenous electron acceptor, such as oxygen,...
technology. These skills were applied to the mass production of penicillin
Penicillin
Penicillin is a group of antibiotics derived from Penicillium fungi. They include penicillin G, procaine penicillin, benzathine penicillin, and penicillin V....
during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, in response to a need from the U.S. government. The antibiotic
Antibiotic
An antibacterial is a compound or substance that kills or slows down the growth of bacteria.The term is often used synonymously with the term antibiotic; today, however, with increased knowledge of the causative agents of various infectious diseases, antibiotic has come to denote a broader range of...
was needed to treat injured Allied soldiers. In fact, most of the penicillin that went ashore with the troops on D-Day
D-Day
D-Day is a term often used in military parlance to denote the day on which a combat attack or operation is to be initiated. "D-Day" often represents a variable, designating the day upon which some significant event will occur or has occurred; see Military designation of days and hours for similar...
was made by Pfizer.
Following the success of penicillin production in the 1940s, penicillin became very inexpensive and Pfizer made very little profit for its efforts. As a result, in the late 1940s Pfizer decided to search for new antibiotics with greater profit potential. The discovery and commercialization of Terramycin (oxytetracycline)
Oxytetracycline
Oxytetracycline was the second of the broad-spectrum tetracycline group of antibiotics to be discovered.Oxytetracycline works by interfering with the ability of bacteria to produce proteins that are essential to them. Without these proteins the bacteria cannot grow, multiply and increase in numbers...
by Pfizer in 1950 moved the company on the path of change from a manufacturer of fine chemicals to a research-based pharmaceutical company. To augment its research in fermentation technology, Pfizer began a program to discover drugs through chemical synthesis. Pfizer also established an animal health division in 1959 with an 700 acres (2.8 km²) farm and research facility in Terre Haute, Indiana
Terre Haute, Indiana
Terre Haute is a city and the county seat of Vigo County, Indiana, United States, near the state's western border with Illinois. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 60,785 and its metropolitan area had a population of 170,943. The city is the county seat of Vigo County and...
.
By the 1950s, Pfizer was established in Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, Iran, Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, Turkey and the United Kingdom. In 1960, the Company moved its medical research laboratory operations to a new facility in Groton, Connecticut. In 1980 Pfizer launched Feldene (piroxicam)
Piroxicam
Piroxicam is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug of the oxicam class used to relieve the symptoms of rheumatoid and osteoarthritis, primary dysmenorrhoea, postoperative pain; and act as an analgesic, especially where there is an inflammatory component...
, a prescription anti-inflammatory
Anti-inflammatory
Anti-inflammatory refers to the property of a substance or treatment that reduces inflammation. Anti-inflammatory drugs make up about half of analgesics, remedying pain by reducing inflammation as opposed to opioids, which affect the central nervous system....
medication that became Pfizer's first product to reach a total of a billion United States dollars in sales.
During the 1980s and 1990s Pfizer underwent a period of growth sustained by the discovery and marketing of Zoloft, Lipitor, Norvasc, Zithromax, Aricept, Diflucan, and Viagra. Pfizer has recently grown by mergers, including those with Warner–Lambert (2000), with Pharmacia
Pharmacia
Pharmacia was a pharmaceutical and biotechnological company in Sweden.-History:Pharmacia was founded in 1911 in Stockholm, Sweden by pharmacist Gustav Felix Grönfeldt at the Elgen Pharmacy. The company is named after the Greek word φαρμακεία, transliterated pharmakeia, which means 'sorcery'...
(2003), and with Wyeth
Wyeth
Wyeth, formerly one of the companies owned by American Home Products Corporation , was a pharmaceutical company. The company was based in Madison, New Jersey, USA...
(2009).
A July 2010 article in BusinessWeek reported that Pfizer was seeing more success in its battle against makers of counterfeit
Counterfeit
To counterfeit means to illegally imitate something. Counterfeit products are often produced with the intent to take advantage of the superior value of the imitated product...
prescription drugs by pursuing civil lawsuits rather than criminal prosecution. Pfizer has hired customs and narcotics experts from all over the globe to track down fakes and assemble evidence that can be used to pursue civil suits for trademark infringement
Trademark infringement
Trademark infringement is a violation of the exclusive rights attaching to a trademark without the authorization of the trademark owner or any licensees...
. Since 2007, Pfizer has spent $3.3 million on investigations and legal fees and recovered about $5.1 million, with another $5 million tied up in ongoing cases.
In February 2011 it was announced that it was to close its research and development facility in Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
, which employs 2,400 people.
On April 2011 Pfizer Inc has agreed to sell their world's largest maker of hard capsules Capsugel
Capsugel
Capsugel, not currently a division of Pfizer, is the world leader in the sales and manufacture of gelatin and non-gelatin capsules. With global manufacturing, sales and service, Capsugel provides empty capsules, as well as formulations, for both pharmaceuticals and dietary supplements...
unit for about $2.38 billion to private equity firm KKR & Co. The cash will be used for a part of share buyback about $5 billion planned for 2011.
Corporate structure
M. Anthony Burns
M. Anthony Burns is an American businessman who serves on the boards of directors of J.P. Morgan Chase, Pfizer Inc., The Black & Decker Corporation and J.C. Penney. He is also the former President and CEO of Ryder Systems...
, Robert Burt
Robert Burt
Dr. Robert Burt was the son of freed slaves who completed medical school at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, with honors in 1897. He soon set up practice in Clarksville, Tennessee. He operated an infirmary and later the only hospital in the city of Clarksville from 1904 to 1916...
, Don Cornwell, William H. Gray, Frances D. Fergusson
Frances D. Fergusson
Frances Daly Fergusson served as president of Vassar College from 1986 to 2006. A graduate of Wellesley College, Fergusson earned her A.M. and Ph.D...
, Constance Horner, William R. Howell
William R. Howell
William R. Howell is Chairman Emeritus, J.C. Penney Company, Inc. Holds bachelor of business administration degree. Joined J.C. Penney, a department store and catalog chain, in 1958. Held a variety of management positions...
, Stanley Ikenberry, Ian Read
Ian Read
Ian C. Read was Vice President of Pfizer and the company's President of Worldwide Pharmaceutical Operations. On December 6, 2010 Pfizer's CEO Jeffrey Kindler resigned and it was announced that Ian Read would replace him.-Early life:...
(chairman), George Lorch, John P. Mascotte, Dana Mead, Ruth J. Simmons, and William Steere.
- Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chairman of the Board: Ian ReadIan ReadIan C. Read was Vice President of Pfizer and the company's President of Worldwide Pharmaceutical Operations. On December 6, 2010 Pfizer's CEO Jeffrey Kindler resigned and it was announced that Ian Read would replace him.-Early life:...
- Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Senior Vice President: Frank A. D'Amelio
- Vice Chairman: David L. Shedlarz
- Strategy and Business Development and Senior Vice President: William R. Ringo Jr.
- General Counsel, Corporate Secretary and Senior Vice President: Amy W. Schulman
- Chief Communications Officer (CCOCCOCCO may refer to:Organizational positions:*Chief communications officer, the executive responsible for communications, public relations and/or public affairs*Chief commercial officer, the executive responsible for commercial strategy and development...
) and Senior Vice President: Sally Susman - President of Worldwide Pharmaceutical Operations and Senior Vice President: Ian ReadIan ReadIan C. Read was Vice President of Pfizer and the company's President of Worldwide Pharmaceutical Operations. On December 6, 2010 Pfizer's CEO Jeffrey Kindler resigned and it was announced that Ian Read would replace him.-Early life:...
- President of Global R&D and Senior Vice President: Martin Mackay
- Senior Vice President and President – Pfizer Global Manufacturing: Natale S. Ricciardi
- Senior Vice President – Worldwide Human Resources: Chuck Hill
- Regional President of U.S., Speciality Care and Oncology Business Unit: Geno Germano
Pfizer has four divisions: Human Health ($44.28B in 2005 sales), Consumer Healthcare ($3.87B in 2005 sales), Animal Health ($2.2B in 2005 sales), and Corporate Groups (which includes legal, finance, and HR). On June 26, 2006, Pfizer announced that it would sell its Consumer Healthcare unit (manufacturer of Listerine, Nicorette
Nicorette
Nicorette is the brand name of a pharmaceutical preparation that contains nicotine for the treatment of tobacco dependence. Nicorette was the first medicinal preparation to facilitate smoking cessation....
, Visine
Visine
Visine is a brand of eye drops produced by Johnson & Johnson. Johnson & Johnson acquired Visine, along with Pfizer's entire consumer healthcare portfolio, in December 2006.-Visine Original:...
, Sudafed
Sudafed
Sudafed is a brand name and registered trademark for over the counter decongestants manufactured by McNeil Laboratories for sale in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States...
and Neosporin
Neosporin
Neosporin is the product branding & formulas now owned by Johnson & Johnson of an antibiotic over-the-counter topical created under Warner-Lambert Consumer Healthcare, now a part of Pfizer...
) to Johnson & Johnson
Johnson & Johnson
Johnson & Johnson is an American multinational pharmaceutical, medical devices and consumer packaged goods manufacturer founded in 1886. Its common stock is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the company is listed among the Fortune 500....
for $16.6 billion.
Warner–Lambert / Parke–Davis / Agouron
Warner–Lambert was founded as a drug store in 1856 in Philadelphia by William R. Warner. Inventing a tablet-coating process gained Warner a place in the Smithsonian InstitutionSmithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
. Parke–Davis was founded in Detroit in 1866, by Hervey Parke and George Davis. Warner–Lambert took over Parke–Davis in 1976, and acquired Wilkinson Sword
Wilkinson Sword
Wilkinson Sword is a brand name for companies that make gardening tools and razors. Wilkinson Sword's origins are in the manufacture of swords. The company was founded in London in 1772. The brand is currently owned by Energizer Holdings. Past product lines have included guns, bayonets, and other...
in 1993 and Agouron in 1999. In 2000 Pfizer took over Warner–Lambert.
Pharmacia / Upjohn / Searle
Searle was founded in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1888. The founder was Gideon Daniel Searle. In 1908, the company was incorporated in Chicago. In 1941, the company established headquarters in Skokie, Illinois. It was acquired by the Monsanto Company, headquartered in St. Louis, in 1985.The Upjohn
Upjohn
The Upjohn Company was a pharmaceutical manufacturing firm founded in 1886 in Kalamazoo, Michigan by Dr. William E. Upjohn, an 1875 graduate of the University of Michigan medical school. The company was originally formed to make friable pills, which were specifically designed to be easily digested...
Company was a pharmaceutical manufacturing firm founded in 1886 in Kalamazoo, Michigan
Kalamazoo, Michigan
The area on which the modern city stands was once home to Native Americans of the Hopewell culture, who migrated into the area sometime before the first millennium. Evidence of their early residency remains in the form of a small mound in downtown's Bronson Park. The Hopewell civilization began to...
by Dr. William E. Upjohn
William E. Upjohn
William Erastus Upjohn was a medical doctor, founder and president of The Upjohn Pharmaceutical Company. He was named Person of the Century by the Kalamazoo Michigan newspaper.-Biography:...
, an 1875 graduate of the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
medical school. The company was originally formed to make friable pills, which were specifically designed to be easily digested.
In 1995, Upjohn merged with Pharmacia
Pharmacia
Pharmacia was a pharmaceutical and biotechnological company in Sweden.-History:Pharmacia was founded in 1911 in Stockholm, Sweden by pharmacist Gustav Felix Grönfeldt at the Elgen Pharmacy. The company is named after the Greek word φαρμακεία, transliterated pharmakeia, which means 'sorcery'...
, to form Pharmacia & Upjohn. Pharmacia
Pharmacia
Pharmacia was a pharmaceutical and biotechnological company in Sweden.-History:Pharmacia was founded in 1911 in Stockholm, Sweden by pharmacist Gustav Felix Grönfeldt at the Elgen Pharmacy. The company is named after the Greek word φαρμακεία, transliterated pharmakeia, which means 'sorcery'...
was created in April 2000 through the merger of Pharmacia & Upjohn with the Monsanto Company and its G.D. Searle unit. The merged company was based in Peapack, New Jersey. The agricultural division was spun off from Pharmacia, as Monsanto, in preparation for the close of the acquisition by Pfizer.
In 2002, Pfizer merged with Pharmacia. The merger was again driven in part by the desire to acquire full rights to a product, this time Celebrex (celecoxib
Celecoxib
Celecoxib INN is a sulfa non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug and selective COX-2 inhibitor used in the treatment of osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, acute pain, painful menstruation and menstrual symptoms, and to reduce numbers of colon and rectum polyps in patients with familial...
), the COX-2 selective inhibitor previously jointly marketed by Searle (acquired by Pharmacia) and Pfizer. In the ensuing years, Pfizer commenced with a massive restructuring resulting in numerous site closures and loss of jobs including: Terre Haute, IN; Holland, MI; Groton, CT; Brooklyn, NY; Sandwich, UK and Puerto Rico.
In 2008, Pfizer announced 275 job cuts at the Kalamazoo manufacturing facility. Kalamazoo was previously the world headquarters for the Upjohn Company.
SUGEN
SUGEN was a company focused on protein kinase inhibitors, founded in 1991 in Redwood CityRedwood City, California
Redwood City is a California charter city located on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California, approximately 27 miles south of San Francisco, and 24 miles north of San Jose. Redwood City's history spans from its earliest inhabitation by the Ohlone people, to its tradition as a port for...
, California and acquired by Pharmacia
Pharmacia
Pharmacia was a pharmaceutical and biotechnological company in Sweden.-History:Pharmacia was founded in 1911 in Stockholm, Sweden by pharmacist Gustav Felix Grönfeldt at the Elgen Pharmacy. The company is named after the Greek word φαρμακεία, transliterated pharmakeia, which means 'sorcery'...
in 1999. The company pioneered the use of ATP-mimetic small molecules to block signal transduction. After the Pfizer merger, the SUGEN site was shut down in 2003, with the loss of over 300 jobs, and the transfer of several programs to Pfizer. These included sunitinib
Sunitinib
Sunitinib is an oral, small-molecule, multi-targeted receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor that was approved by the FDA for the treatment of renal cell carcinoma and imatinib-resistant gastrointestinal stromal tumor on January 26, 2006...
(Sutent), which was approved for human use by the FDA in January 2006, passed $1 bn in annual revenues for Pfizer in 2010. A related compound SU11654 (Toceranib
Toceranib
Toceranib is a receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor and is used in the treatment of canine mast cell tumor also called mastocytoma. Together with masitinib , Toceranib is the only dog-specific anti-cancer drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It is marketed as Palladia as its...
) was also approved for canine tumors, and the ALK inhibitor Crizotinib
Crizotinib
Crizotinib , is an ALK inhibitor, approved for treatment of some non-small cell lung carcinoma in the US, and undergoing clinical trials testing its safety and efficacy in anaplastic large cell lymphoma, neuroblastoma, and other advanced solid tumors in both adults and children.- Mechanism of...
also grew out of a SUGEN program
Wyeth
On January 26, 2009, after more than a year of talks between the two companies, Pfizer agreed to buy pharmaceuticals rival WyethWyeth
Wyeth, formerly one of the companies owned by American Home Products Corporation , was a pharmaceutical company. The company was based in Madison, New Jersey, USA...
for a combined US$68 billion in cash, shares and loans, including some US$22.5 billion lent by five major Wall Street banks. The deal would cement Pfizer's place as the largest pharmaceutical company in the world, with the merged company generating over US$20 billion in cash each year, and represents the largest corporate merger since AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
and BellSouth
BellSouth
BellSouth Corporation is an American telecommunications holding company based in Atlanta, Georgia. BellSouth was one of the seven original Regional Bell Operating Companies after the U.S...
's US$70 billion deal in March 2006. Wyeth's management team is expected to depart following the merger. The combined company could save US$4 billion annually through the streamlining of operations; however, as part of the deal, both companies must repatriate billions of dollars in revenue from foreign sources to the United States, which will result in higher tax costs. The acquisition was completed on October 15, 2009 making Wyeth a wholly owned subsidiary of Pfizer.
Critics of the merger
The merger received a vast array of criticism. Harvard Business SchoolHarvard Business School
Harvard Business School is the graduate business school of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, United States and is widely recognized as one of the top business schools in the world. The school offers the world's largest full-time MBA program, doctoral programs, and many executive...
’s Gary Pisano told The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
:
The record of big mergers and acquisitions in Big Pharma has just not been good. There’s just been an enormous amount of shareholder wealth destroyed.
The Warner–Lambert and Pharmacia mergers do not appear to have achieved gains for shareholders so it is unclear who will benefit from the Wyeth–Pfizer merger to many critics.
King Pharma
In October 2010, Pfizer agreed to buy King PharmaceuticalsKing Pharmaceuticals
King Pharmaceuticals , was the world's 39th largest pharmaceutical company, based in Bristol, Tennessee. However, on October 12, 2010, King was acquired by Pfizer for $14.25 per share. King produced a wide range of pharmaceuticals, including Altace for heart attack prevention, Levoxyl for...
for $3.6 billion in cash or $14.25 per share: an approximately 40% premium over King’s closing share price 11th october 2010.
Development of torcetrapib
Development of torcetrapibTorcetrapib
Torcetrapib was a drug being developed to treat hypercholesterolemia and prevent cardiovascular disease...
, a drug that increases production of HDL
High density lipoprotein
High-density lipoprotein is one of the five major groups of lipoproteins, which, in order of sizes, largest to smallest, are chylomicrons, VLDL, IDL, LDL, and HDL, which enable lipids like cholesterol and triglycerides to be transported within the water-based bloodstream...
, or "good cholesterol", which reduces LDL
Low density lipoprotein
Low-density lipoprotein is one of the five major groups of lipoproteins, which in order of size, largest to smallest, are chylomicrons, VLDL, IDL, LDL, and HDL, that enable transport of cholesterol within the water-based bloodstream...
thought to be correlated to heart disease, was cancelled in December 2006. During a Phase III clinical trial involving 15,000 patients there were more deaths than expected in the group that took the medicine, and a 60% increase in deaths was seen among patients taking torcetrapib plus Lipitor versus Lipitor alone. There was no suggestion these results called into question the safety of Lipitor. Pfizer lost nearly $1 billion invested developing the failed drug, and the market value of the company plummeted in the aftermath.
Pharmaceuticals
Pfizer had the greatest number of blockbuster products in 2009 with 14, which includes five inherited through the acquisition of Wyeth .The following is a list of key prescription pharmaceutical products. The names shown are all registered trademarks of Pfizer Inc.
- Accupril (quinaprilQuinaprilQuinapril is an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor used in the treatment of hypertension and congestive heart failure.-Pharmacology:Quinapril is a prodrug...
) for hypertensionHypertensionHypertension or high blood pressure is a cardiac chronic medical condition in which the systemic arterial blood pressure is elevated. What that means is that the heart is having to work harder than it should to pump the blood around the body. Blood pressure involves two measurements, systolic and...
treatment. - AdvilAdvilAdvil is a brand of ibuprofen, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug . Advil is manufactured by Pfizer and has been on the market since 1984.-History:...
(ibuprofenIbuprofenIbuprofen is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug used for relief of symptoms of arthritis, fever, as an analgesic , especially where there is an inflammatory component, and dysmenorrhea....
) - Aricept (donepezilDonepezilDonepezil, marketed under the trade name Aricept by its developer Eisai and partner Pfizer, is a centrally acting reversible acetylcholinesterase inhibitor. Its main therapeutic use is in the palliative treatment of mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease. Common side effects include...
) for Alzheimer's diseaseAlzheimer's diseaseAlzheimer's disease also known in medical literature as Alzheimer disease is the most common form of dementia. There is no cure for the disease, which worsens as it progresses, and eventually leads to death...
. - Aromasin (exemestaneExemestaneExemestane is a drug used to treat breast cancer. It is a member of the class of drugs known as aromatase inhibitors. Some breast cancers require estrogen to grow. Those cancers have estrogen receptors , and are called ER-positive. They may also be called estrogen-responsive,...
) for the prevention of breast cancer and the prevention of osteoporosisOsteoporosisOsteoporosis is a disease of bones that leads to an increased risk of fracture. In osteoporosis the bone mineral density is reduced, bone microarchitecture is deteriorating, and the amount and variety of proteins in bone is altered...
and menopauseMenopauseMenopause is a term used to describe the permanent cessation of the primary functions of the human ovaries: the ripening and release of ova and the release of hormones that cause both the creation of the uterine lining and the subsequent shedding of the uterine lining...
for women. - Bextra (ValdecoxibValdecoxibValdecoxib is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug used in the treatment of osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and painful menstruation and menstrual symptoms. It is a cyclooxygenase-2 selective inhibitor....
) for arthritisArthritisArthritis is a form of joint disorder that involves inflammation of one or more joints....
. - CaduetCaduetThe drug combination atorvastatin/amlodipine is a medication approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of high cholesterol and high blood pressure. It is a fixed dose combination drug containing the calcium channel blocker amlodipine and the statin atorvastatin...
(amlodipineAmlodipineAmlodipine is a long-acting calcium channel blocker used as an anti-hypertensive and in the treatment of angina...
) and (atorvastatinAtorvastatinAtorvastatin , sold by Pfizer under the trade name Lipitor, is a member of the drug class known as statins, used for lowering blood cholesterol. It also stabilizes plaque and prevents strokes through anti-inflammatory and other mechanisms...
) for cholesterolCholesterolCholesterol is a complex isoprenoid. Specifically, it is a waxy steroid of fat that is produced in the liver or intestines. It is used to produce hormones and cell membranes and is transported in the blood plasma of all mammals. It is an essential structural component of mammalian cell membranes...
and hypertensionHypertensionHypertension or high blood pressure is a cardiac chronic medical condition in which the systemic arterial blood pressure is elevated. What that means is that the heart is having to work harder than it should to pump the blood around the body. Blood pressure involves two measurements, systolic and...
. - Camptosar (irinotecanIrinotecanIrinotecan is a drug used for the treatment of cancer.Irinotecan prevents DNA from unwinding by inhibition of topoisomerase 1. In chemical terms, it is a semisynthetic analogue of the natural alkaloid camptothecin....
) for cancer and Chemotherapeutic agents. - Celebrex (celecoxibCelecoxibCelecoxib INN is a sulfa non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug and selective COX-2 inhibitor used in the treatment of osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, acute pain, painful menstruation and menstrual symptoms, and to reduce numbers of colon and rectum polyps in patients with familial...
) for arthritisArthritisArthritis is a form of joint disorder that involves inflammation of one or more joints....
. - Chantix/Champix (Varenicline) for Nicotinic agonists, and anti nicotine drugs.
- Cefobid a cephalosporin antibiotic.
- ChapStickChapStickChapStick is a brand name for lip balm manufactured by Pfizer Consumer Healthcare and used in Australia, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Colombia, Italy, Chile, Pakistan, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Argentina, the United Kingdom and the United States. It is intended to help treat and prevent chapped...
, a lip balmLip balmLip balm or lip salve is a wax-like substance applied topically to the lips of the mouth to relieve chapped or dry lips, angular cheilitis, stomatitis, or cold sores. Lip balm often contains beeswax or carnauba wax, camphor, cetyl alcohol, lanolin, paraffin, and petrolatum, among other ingredients... - Depo-Medrol (methylprednisoloneMethylprednisoloneMethylprednisolone is a synthetic glucocorticoid or corticosteroid drug. It is marketed in the USA and Canada under the brand names Medrol and Solu-Medrol. It is also available as a generic drug....
) for asthmaAsthmaAsthma is the common chronic inflammatory disease of the airways characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and bronchospasm. Symptoms include wheezing, coughing, chest tightness, and shortness of breath...
. - Solu-Medrol (methylprednisoloneMethylprednisoloneMethylprednisolone is a synthetic glucocorticoid or corticosteroid drug. It is marketed in the USA and Canada under the brand names Medrol and Solu-Medrol. It is also available as a generic drug....
) for asthmaAsthmaAsthma is the common chronic inflammatory disease of the airways characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and bronchospasm. Symptoms include wheezing, coughing, chest tightness, and shortness of breath...
. - DimetappDimetappDimetapp is a combination preparation marketed to relieve symptoms of the common cold, manufactured by Pfizer . It contains brompheniramine and phenylephrine . Dimetapp DM additionally contains dextromethorphan...
for the common coldCommon coldThe common cold is a viral infectious disease of the upper respiratory system, caused primarily by rhinoviruses and coronaviruses. Common symptoms include a cough, sore throat, runny nose, and fever...
. - Depo ProveraDepo ProveraDepo-Provera is a branded progestogen-only contraceptive, depot medroxyprogesterone acetate long acting reversible hormonal contraceptive birth control drug that is injected every 3 months...
for birth controlBirth controlBirth control is an umbrella term for several techniques and methods used to prevent fertilization or to interrupt pregnancy at various stages. Birth control techniques and methods include contraception , contragestion and abortion...
. - Detrol, and Detrol LA (tolterodineTolterodineTolterodine is an antimuscarinic drug that is used to treat urinary incontinence.It is marketed by Pfizer in Canada and the United States by its brand name Detrol. In Egypt it is also found under the trade names Tolterodine by Sabaa and Incont L.A...
), for bladder control problems. - Diflucan (fluconazoleFluconazoleFluconazole is a triazole antifungal drug used in the treatment and prevention of superficial and systemic fungal infections. In a bulk powder form, it appears as a white crystalline powder, and it is very slightly soluble in water and soluble in alcohol. It is commonly marketed under the trade...
) for antifungal drugAntifungal drugAn antifungal medication is a medication used to treat fungal infections such as athlete's foot, ringworm, candidiasis , serious systemic infections such as cryptococcal meningitis, and others...
. - Ellence (epirubicinEpirubicinEpirubicin is an anthracycline drug used for chemotherapy. It is marketed by Pfizer under the trade name Ellence in the US and Pharmorubicin or Epirubicin Ebewe elsewhere....
) for cancer and chemotherapy drug. - Eraxis (anidulafunginAnidulafunginAnidulafungin or Eraxis is an antifungal drug originally manufactured and submitted for FDA approval by Vicuron Pharmaceuticals. Pfizer acquired the drug upon its acquisition of Vicuron in the fall of 2005. Pfizer gained approval by the Food and Drug Administration on February 21, 2006; it was...
) for antifungal drugAntifungal drugAn antifungal medication is a medication used to treat fungal infections such as athlete's foot, ringworm, candidiasis , serious systemic infections such as cryptococcal meningitis, and others...
. - Exubera (inhalable insulinInhalable insulinInhalable insulin was available from September 2006 to October 2007 in the United States as a new method of delivering insulin, a drug used in the treatment of diabetes, to the body...
) for diabetes, and insulin therapiesInsulin therapyInsulin therapy is the treatment of diabetes by administration of exogenous insulin.Insulin is used medically to treat some forms of diabetes mellitus. Patients with Type 1 diabetes mellitus depend on external insulin for their survival because the hormone is no longer produced internally...
. - Flagyl (metronidazoleMetronidazoleMetronidazole is a nitroimidazole antibiotic medication used particularly for anaerobic bacteria and protozoa. Metronidazole is an antibiotic, amebicide, and antiprotozoal....
) for bacterial and protozoal infections. - Genotropin (Growth hormoneGrowth hormoneGrowth hormone is a peptide hormone that stimulates growth, cell reproduction and regeneration in humans and other animals. Growth hormone is a 191-amino acid, single-chain polypeptide that is synthesized, stored, and secreted by the somatotroph cells within the lateral wings of the anterior...
) for N/A. - Geodon (ziprasidoneZiprasidoneZiprasidone was the fifth atypical antipsychotic to gain FDA approval . In the United States, Ziprasidone is Food and Drug Administration approved for the treatment of schizophrenia, and the intramuscular injection form of ziprasidone is approved for acute agitation in schizophrenic patients...
) for schizophreniaSchizophreniaSchizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
and bipolar disorderBipolar disorderBipolar disorder or bipolar affective disorder, historically known as manic–depressive disorder, is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a category of mood disorders defined by the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated energy levels, cognition, and mood with or without one or...
. - Inspra (eplerenoneEplerenoneEplerenone is an aldosterone antagonist used as an adjunct in the management of chronic heart failure. It is similar to the diuretic spironolactone, though it may be more specific for the mineralocorticoid receptor and is specifically marketed for reducing cardiovascular risk in patients...
) for diuretics. - Lipitor, Sortis (atorvastatinAtorvastatinAtorvastatin , sold by Pfizer under the trade name Lipitor, is a member of the drug class known as statins, used for lowering blood cholesterol. It also stabilizes plaque and prevents strokes through anti-inflammatory and other mechanisms...
) for cholesterolCholesterolCholesterol is a complex isoprenoid. Specifically, it is a waxy steroid of fat that is produced in the liver or intestines. It is used to produce hormones and cell membranes and is transported in the blood plasma of all mammals. It is an essential structural component of mammalian cell membranes...
. - Lyrica (pregabalinPregabalinPregabalin is an anticonvulsant drug used for neuropathic pain and as an adjunct therapy for partial seizures with or without secondary generalization in adults. It has also been found effective for generalized anxiety disorder and is approved for this use in the European Union. It was designed...
) for neuropathic painNeuropathic painNeuropathic pain results from lesions or diseases affecting the somatosensory system. It may be associated with abnormal sensations called dysesthesia, which occur spontaneously and allodynia that occurs in response to external stimuli. Neuropathic pain may have continuous and/or episodic ...
. - Macugen (pegaptanibPegaptanibPegaptanib sodium injection is an anti-angiogenic medicine for the treatment of neovascular age-related macular degeneration . It was discovered by Gilead Sciences and licensed in 2000 to EyeTech Pharmaceuticals, now OSI Pharmaceuticals, for late stage development and marketing in the United...
) for N/A - Norvasc (amlodipineAmlodipineAmlodipine is a long-acting calcium channel blocker used as an anti-hypertensive and in the treatment of angina...
) for hypertensionHypertensionHypertension or high blood pressure is a cardiac chronic medical condition in which the systemic arterial blood pressure is elevated. What that means is that the heart is having to work harder than it should to pump the blood around the body. Blood pressure involves two measurements, systolic and... - Neurontin (gabapentinGabapentinGabapentin is a pharmaceutical drug, specifically a GABA analogue. It was originally developed for the treatment of epilepsy, and currently is also used to relieve neuropathic pain...
) for neuropathic painNeuropathic painNeuropathic pain results from lesions or diseases affecting the somatosensory system. It may be associated with abnormal sensations called dysesthesia, which occur spontaneously and allodynia that occurs in response to external stimuli. Neuropathic pain may have continuous and/or episodic ...
. - Preparation HPreparation HPreparation H is a brand of medications, manufactured by Pfizer, used in the treatment of hemorrhoids.Preparation H dates from about 1935. It was originally packaged in a tube like toothpaste, with a similar consistency...
for hemorrhoidHemorrhoidHemorrhoids or haemorrhoids , are vascular structures in the anal canal which help with stool control. They become pathological or piles when swollen or inflamed. In their physiological state they act as a cushion composed of arterio-venous channels and connective tissue that aid the passage of...
s - Relpax (eletriptanEletriptanEletriptan is a second generation triptan drug marketed and manufactured by Pfizer Inc for the treatment of migraine headaches. It is sold in the US under the brand name Relpax.-Approval and availability:...
) for including the sulfonamide group of migrane. - Rescriptor (delavirdineDelavirdineDelavirdine is a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor marketed by ViiV Healthcare. It is used as part of highly active antiretroviral therapy for the treatment of human immunodeficiency virus type 1. It is presented as the mesylate...
) for HIV. - RobitussinRobitussinRobitussin is a line of cold and cough medicines currently produced by Pfizer. Robitussin is available in various formulations. Robitussin contains an expectorant ; Robitussin DM adds a cough suppressant to the expectorant ; Robitussin CF is a cold formula that adds an expectorant and a nasal...
for coughs and coldCommon coldThe common cold is a viral infectious disease of the upper respiratory system, caused primarily by rhinoviruses and coronaviruses. Common symptoms include a cough, sore throat, runny nose, and fever...
s. - Selzentry (maravirocMaravirocMaraviroc is an antiretroviral drug in the CCR5 receptor antagonist class used in the treatment of HIV infection. It is also classed as an entry inhibitor.-Mechanism of action:...
) for HIV. - Somavert (pegvisomantPegvisomantPegvisomant is a growth hormone receptor antagonist used in the treatment of acromegaly. It is used if the tumor of the pituitary gland causing the acromegaly cannot be controlled with surgery or radiation, and the use of somatostatin analogues is unsuccessful...
) for AcromegalyAcromegalyAcromegaly is a syndrome that results when the anterior pituitary gland produces excess growth hormone after epiphyseal plate closure at puberty...
. - Sutent (sunitinibSunitinibSunitinib is an oral, small-molecule, multi-targeted receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor that was approved by the FDA for the treatment of renal cell carcinoma and imatinib-resistant gastrointestinal stromal tumor on January 26, 2006...
) for cancer and chemotherapy drug. - Tikosyn (dofetilideDofetilideDofetilide is a class III antiarrhythmic agent.It is marketed under the trade name Tikosyn by Pfizer, and is available in the United States in capsules containing 125, 250, and 500 µg of dofetilide....
) for atrial fibrillation and flutter. - Vfend (voriconazoleVoriconazoleVoriconazole is a triazole antifungal medication that is generally used to treat serious, invasive fungal infections. These are generally seen in patients who are immunocompromised, and include invasive candidiasis, invasive aspergillosis, and certain emerging fungal infections.-Invasive...
) for antifungal drugAntifungal drugAn antifungal medication is a medication used to treat fungal infections such as athlete's foot, ringworm, candidiasis , serious systemic infections such as cryptococcal meningitis, and others...
. - Viagra (sildenafilSildenafilSildenafil citrate, sold as Viagra, Revatio and under various other trade names, is a drug used to treat erectile dysfunction and pulmonary arterial hypertension . It was originally developed by British scientists and then brought to market by the US-based pharmaceutical company Pfizer...
) for erectile dysfunctionErectile dysfunctionErectile dysfunction is sexual dysfunction characterized by the inability to develop or maintain an erection of the penis during sexual performance....
. - Viracept (nelfinavirNelfinavirNelfinavir is an antiretroviral drug used in the treatment of the human immunodeficiency virus . Nelfinavir belongs to the class of drugs known as protease inhibitors and like other PIs is generally used in combination with other antiretroviral drugs.Nelfinavir mesylate is a potent and orally...
) for AIDS. - Xalatan (latanoprostLatanoprostLatanoprost ophthalmic solution is a topical medication used for controlling the progression of glaucoma or ocular hypertension by reducing intraocular pressure...
) for glaucomaGlaucomaGlaucoma is an eye disorder in which the optic nerve suffers damage, permanently damaging vision in the affected eye and progressing to complete blindness if untreated. It is often, but not always, associated with increased pressure of the fluid in the eye... - Xalacom latanoprostLatanoprostLatanoprost ophthalmic solution is a topical medication used for controlling the progression of glaucoma or ocular hypertension by reducing intraocular pressure...
and timololTimololTimolol maleate is a non-selective beta-adrenergic receptor blocker.-Uses:In its oral form , it is used:* to treat high blood pressure* to prevent heart attacks* to prevent migraine headaches...
Medication for glaucoma. - Xanax and Xanax XR (alprazolamAlprazolamAlprazolam is a short-acting anxiolytic of the benzodiazepine class of psychoactive drugs. Alprazolam, like other benzodiazepines, binds to specific sites on the GABAA gamma-amino-butyric acid receptor...
) for anxiety and panic disorders. - Zoloft (sertralineSertralineSertraline hydrochloride is an antidepressant of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor class. It was introduced to the market by Pfizer in 1991. Sertraline is primarily used to treat major depression in adult outpatients as well as obsessive–compulsive, panic, and social anxiety disorders in...
) for an antidepressantAntidepressantAn antidepressant is a psychiatric medication used to alleviate mood disorders, such as major depression and dysthymia and anxiety disorders such as social anxiety disorder. According to Gelder, Mayou &*Geddes people with a depressive illness will experience a therapeutic effect to their mood;...
. - Zyvox (linezolidLinezolidLinezolid is a synthetic antibiotic used for the treatment of serious infections caused by Gram-positive bacteria that are resistant to several other antibiotics...
) for antibiotics.
In addition to marketing branded pharmaceutials Pfizer is involved in the manufacture and sale of generics
Generic drug
A generic drug is a drug defined as "a drug product that is comparable to brand/reference listed drug product in dosage form, strength, route of administration, quality and performance characteristics, and intended use." It has also been defined as a term referring to any drug marketed under its...
. In the US it does this through its Greenstone subsidiary which it acquired as part of the acquisition of Pharmacia. Pfizer also has a licensing deal in place with Aurobindo which grants the former access to a variety of oral solid generic products.
Animal health brands
The following is a partial list of Animal Health brands manufactured by Pfizer:
- Bovi-Shield Gold
- CereniaMaropitantMaropitant , used as maropitant citrate , is a neurokinin receptor antagonist, which was developed by Pfizer Animal Health specifically for the treatment of motion sickness and vomiting in dogs. It has not been approved by the FDA for use in any animal except dogs...
- ConveniaCefovecinCefovecin is an antibiotic of the cephalosporin class, licensed for the treatment of skin infections in cats and dogs. It is marketed by Pfizer under the trade name Convenia.-Approval and usage:...
- DectomaxDoramectinDoramectin is a veterinary drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of parasites such as gastrointestinal roundworms, lungworms, eyeworms, grubs, sucking lice and mange mites in cattle....
- DraxxinTulathromycinTulathromycin is a macrolide antibiotic used to treat bovine respiratory disease in cattle and swine respiratory disease in pigs. It is marketed by Pfizer Inc. under the tradename Draxxin....
- ExcedeCeftiofurCeftiofur is an antibiotic of the cephalosporin type , licensed for use in veterinary medicine. It was first described in 1987. It is marketed by pharmaceutical company Pfizer as Excede....
- ExcenelCeftiofurCeftiofur is an antibiotic of the cephalosporin type , licensed for use in veterinary medicine. It was first described in 1987. It is marketed by pharmaceutical company Pfizer as Excede....
- Inovocox
- Mycitracin
- PalladiaToceranibToceranib is a receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor and is used in the treatment of canine mast cell tumor also called mastocytoma. Together with masitinib , Toceranib is the only dog-specific anti-cancer drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It is marketed as Palladia as its...
- PirsuePirlimycinPirlimycin hydrochloride belongs to the lincosamide class of antimicrobials. Under the trade name Pirsue, it is used in the treatment of mastitis in cattle.-Activity:...
- A180DanofloxacinDanofloxacin is a fluoroquinolone antibiotic used in veterinary medicine....
- Revolution Pet MedicineSelamectinSelamectin is a topical parasiticide and antihelminthic used on dogs and cats, distributed by Pfizer. It prevents heartworms, fleas, ear mites, sarcoptic mange , and certain types of ticks in dogs, and prevents heartworms, fleas, ear mites, hookworms, and roundworms in cats...
- RimadylCarprofenCarprofen is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug that is used by veterinarians as a supportive treatment for the relief of arthritic symptoms in geriatric dogs. It is also used for pain relief and to reduce swelling after spay or neuter...
- SimplicefCefpodoximeCefpodoxime is an oral third generation cephalosporin antibiotic. It is marketed as the prodrug cefpodoxime proxetil by Pharmacia & Upjohn under the trade name Vantin. It is active against most Gram positive and Gram negative organisms. Notable exceptions include Pseudomonas aeruginosa,...
- SlentrolDirlotapideDirlotapide is a drug used to treat obesity in dogs. It is manufactured by Pfizer and marketed as Slentrol.It works as a selective microsomal triglyceride transfer protein inhibitor. This blocks the assembly and release of lipoproteins into the bloodstream, thereby reducing fat absorption...
- Solitude IGR
- Spectramast
- Stellamune
- StrongholdSelamectinSelamectin is a topical parasiticide and antihelminthic used on dogs and cats, distributed by Pfizer. It prevents heartworms, fleas, ear mites, sarcoptic mange , and certain types of ticks in dogs, and prevents heartworms, fleas, ear mites, hookworms, and roundworms in cats...
Legislation and litigation
Pfizer is party to a number of suits stemming from its pharmaceutical products as well as practices of various companies it has acquired or merged with.Kelo case
Pfizer's interest in obtaining property in New LondonNew London, Connecticut
New London is a seaport city and a port of entry on the northeast coast of the United States.It is located at the mouth of the Thames River in New London County, southeastern Connecticut....
, Connecticut, for expanded facilities led to the Kelo v. New London case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court's 2005 decision in Kelo v. City of New London handed local governments the right to seize private property for economic development, i. e., offices, a hotel to enhance Pfizer Inc.'s nearby corporate facility. However, following the completion of the aforementioned Wyeth merger, Pfizer announced it will close its research and development headquarters in New London, Connecticut, moving employees to nearby Groton
Groton, Connecticut
Groton is a town located on the Thames River in New London County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 39,907 at the 2000 census....
.
Quigley Co.
Pfizer acquired Quigley in 1968, and the division sold asbestosAsbestos
Asbestos is a set of six naturally occurring silicate minerals used commercially for their desirable physical properties. They all have in common their eponymous, asbestiform habit: long, thin fibrous crystals...
-containing insulation products until the early 1970s. Asbestos victims and Pfizer have been negotiating a settlement deal which calls for Pfizer to pay $430 million to 80 percent of existing plaintiffs. It will also place an additional $535 million into an asbestos settlement trust that will compensate future plaintiffs as well as the remaining 20 percent of current plaintiffs with claims against Pfizer and Quigley. The compensation deal is worth $965 million all up. Of that $535 million, $405 million is in a 40-year note from Pfizer, while $100 million will come from insurance policies.
Bjork–Shiley heart valve
Pfizer purchased Shiley in 1979 at the onset of its Convexo-Concave valve ordeal, involving the Bjork–Shiley heart valveHeart valve
A heart valve normally allows blood flow in only one direction through the heart. The four valves commonly represented in a mammalian heart determine the pathway of blood flow through the heart...
. Approximately 500 people died when defective valves failed and, in 1994, the United States ruled against Pfizer for ~$200 million.
Political lobbying
Pfizer is a leading member of the U.S. Global Leadership CoalitionU.S. Global Leadership Coalition
The U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, also known as the USGLC, is a influential, broad-based organization formed by a coalition of 400 American businesses and NGOs, senior national security and foreign policy experts, and diverse range of community leaders from across the country who promote...
, a Washington D.C.-based coalition of over 400 major companies and NGOs that advocates for a larger International Affairs Budget, which funds American diplomatic, humanitarian, and development efforts abroad.
Pfizer is one of the single largest lobbying interests in United States politics. For example in the first 9 months of 2009 Pfizer spent over $16.3 million on lobbying US congressional lawmakers, making them the sixth largest lobbying interest in the US (following Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), which ranked fourth but also represents many of their interests). A spokeswoman for Pfizer said the company “wanted to make sure our voice is heard in this conversation” in regards to the companies expenditure of $25 million in 2010 to lobby health care reform.
Pfizer's primary interests are opposition of Congressional efforts to attach a prescription drug benefit to Medicare and opposition to generic drugs entering US markets. Pfizer also purportedly proposed a ban on all lawsuit
Lawsuit
A lawsuit or "suit in law" is a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...
s against manufacturers
Manufacturing
Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...
of body implant parts which was proposed in the United States Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
as part of tort reform
Tort reform
Tort reform refers to proposed changes in common law civil justice systems that would reduce tort litigation or damages. Tort actions are civil common law claims first created in the English commonwealth system as a non-legislative means for compensating wrongs and harm done by one party to...
legislation.
According to U.S. State Department cables released by the whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...
, Pfizer "lobbied against New Zealand getting a free trade
Free trade
Under a free trade policy, prices emerge from supply and demand, and are the sole determinant of resource allocation. 'Free' trade differs from other forms of trade policy where the allocation of goods and services among trading countries are determined by price strategies that may differ from...
agreement with the United States because it objected to New Zealand’s restrictive drug buying rules and tried to get rid of New Zealand’s former health minister, Helen Clark
Helen Clark
Helen Elizabeth Clark, ONZ is a New Zealand political figure who was the 37th Prime Minister of New Zealand for three consecutive terms from 1999 to 2008...
, in 1990.
Off-label promotional practices
Access to pharmaceutical industry documents has revealed marketingPharmaceutical marketing
Pharmaceutical marketing , sometimes called medico-marketing, is the business of advertising or otherwise promoting the sale of pharmaceuticals or drugs. There is some evidence that marketing practices can negatively affect both patients and the health care profession...
strategies used to promote Neurontin for off-label use. In 1993, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved gabapentin
Gabapentin
Gabapentin is a pharmaceutical drug, specifically a GABA analogue. It was originally developed for the treatment of epilepsy, and currently is also used to relieve neuropathic pain...
(Neurontin, Pfizer) only for treatment of seizures. Warner–Lambert, which merged with Pfizer in 2000, used activities not usually associated with sales promotion, including continuing medical education
Continuing medical education
Continuing medical education refers to a specific form of continuing education that helps those in the medical field maintain competence and learn about new and developing areas of their field. These activities may take place as live events, written publications, online programs, audio, video, or...
and research, sponsored articles about the drug for the medical literature, and alleged suppression of unfavorable study results, to promote gabapentin. Within 5 years the drug was being widely used for the off-label treatment of pain and psychiatric conditions. In 2004, Warner–Lambert admitted to charges that it violated FDA regulations by promoting the drug for pain, psychiatric conditions, migraine, and other unapproved uses, and paid $430 million to resolve criminal and civil health care liability charges. Today it is a mainstay drug for migraines, even though it was not approved for such use in 2004.
Bextra settlement of off-label marketing investigation
In September 2009, the United States Department of JusticeUnited States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
announced that Pfizer had agreed to pay $2.3 billion to settle civil and criminal allegations that it had illegally marketed four drugs: Bextra, Geodon, Zyvox, and Lyrica "with the intent to defraud or mislead" by promoting the drugs for non-approved uses; this marks Pfizer's fourth such settlement in a decade. Pharmacia & Upjohn Company, Inc., a Pfizer subsidiary, agreed to plead guilty to mis-branded promotion of Bextra, a felony violation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. The criminal fine accounts for $1.3 billion of the settlement, and is the largest criminal penalty ever imposed in American history. Pfizer has entered an extensive corporate integrity agreement (CIA) with the Office of Inspector General and will be required to make substantial structural reforms within the company, and maintain the Pfizer website (www.pfizer.com/pmc) to track the company's post marketing commitments. Pfizer must also put a searchable database of all payments to physicians the company has made on the Pfizer website by March 31, 2010. In addition, two former employees were separately indicted and sentenced for their role in marketing of Bextra. A former District Sales manager was found guilty of obstruction of justice for destroying documents pertinent to the investigation, and a Regional Sales Manager pled guilty to the distribution of a mis-branded product.
The case is the largest civil settlement against a pharmaceutical company as well. Pfizer paid a $1 billion civil fine to settle allegations it had illegally promoted the drugs for uses that were not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and caused false claims
False Claims Act
The False Claims Act is an American federal law that imposes liability on persons and companies who defraud governmental programs. The law includes a "qui tam" provision that allows people who are not affiliated with the government to file actions on behalf of the government...
to be submitted to Federal and State programs including but not limited to Medicare
Medicare (United States)
Medicare is a social insurance program administered by the United States government, providing health insurance coverage to people who are aged 65 and over; to those who are under 65 and are permanently physically disabled or who have a congenital physical disability; or to those who meet other...
and Medicaid
Medicaid
Medicaid is the United States health program for certain people and families with low incomes and resources. It is a means-tested program that is jointly funded by the state and federal governments, and is managed by the states. People served by Medicaid are U.S. citizens or legal permanent...
. Under the False Claims Act
False Claims Act
The False Claims Act is an American federal law that imposes liability on persons and companies who defraud governmental programs. The law includes a "qui tam" provision that allows people who are not affiliated with the government to file actions on behalf of the government...
, damages can be assessed for violations of the federal Anti-Kickback statute, 42 U.S.C. § 1320a–7b(b) and the off-label marketing provision within the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act ("FDCA"), 21 U.S.C. §§301-97. Six whistle-blowers
Qui tam
In common law, a writ of qui tam is a writ whereby a private individual who assists a prosecution can receive all or part of any penalty imposed...
will receive $102 million for their participation in the civil investigation, and John Kopchinski, a former sales representative, will receive $51.5 million for his allegations involving the marketing of Bextra.
CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
reported that Pharmacia & Upjohn, not Pfizer itself, pleaded guilty because prosecutors thought Pfizer was "too big to nail." Companies convicted of major health care fraud are automatically barred from billing Medicare and Medicaid for their products. Prosecutors feared that Pfizer would collapse if it pleaded guilty, and felt that the risk of harm to patients was too great. A CNN investigation revealed that Pharmacia & Upjohn Company is little more than a shell corporation Pfizer uses to plead guilty; it was first created in 2007 as the defendant in a kickback case.
Nigeria
In 1996, an outbreak of measles, cholera, and bacterial meningitis occurred in Nigeria. Pfizer representatives traveled to Kano, Nigeria to administer an experimental antibioticAntibiotic
An antibacterial is a compound or substance that kills or slows down the growth of bacteria.The term is often used synonymously with the term antibiotic; today, however, with increased knowledge of the causative agents of various infectious diseases, antibiotic has come to denote a broader range of...
, trovafloxacin
Trovafloxacin
Trovafloxacin is a broad spectrum antibiotic that inhibits the uncoiling of supercoiled DNA in various bacteria by blocking the activity of DNA gyrase and topoisomerase IV. It was withdrawn from the market due to the risk of hepatotoxicity...
, to approximately 200 children. Local Kano officials report that more than 50 children died in the experiment, while many others developed mental and physical deformities. In 2001, families of the children, as well as the governments of Kano and Nigeria, filed lawsuits regarding the treatment. Representing the government is Babatunde Irukera. According to news reports, "[r]esearchers did not obtain signed consent forms, and medical personnel said Pfizer did not tell parents their children were getting the experimental drug." The lawsuits also accuse Pfizer of using the outbreak to perform unapproved human testing, as well as allegedly under-dosing a control group being treated with traditional antibiotics in order to skew the results of the trial in favor of Trovan. Pfizer denied these claims, and subsequently produced an approval letter for testing from the Nigerian Ethics Committee. The Nigerian government insisted that it was a fake and a panel of Nigerian medical experts agreed that the letter had been concocted and backdated by the company's lead researcher in Kano. They went on to conclude that Pfizer never obtained authorization from the Nigerian government to give the unproven drug to children and infants.
In 2007, Pfizer published a Statement of Defense letter. The letter makes several claims, including that Pfizer donated 18 million in Nigerian Naira (NGN) (about $216,000 in 1996 US dollars (USD)) , that the drug's oral form was presented as safer and easier to administer, that the administration of Trovan saved lives, and that no unusual side effects, unrelated to meningitis, were observed after 4 weeks.
A more likely reason for Pfizer's insistence on the oral form is the result of testing trovafloxacin intravenously in 1995, which found that the drug precipitated in saline, making it ineffective in patients receiving IV fluids. This is inferred from an FDA Warning Letter
FDA Warning Letter
The United States Food and Drug Adminstration defines a Warning Letter as "...a correspondence that notifies regulated industry about violations that FDA has documented during its inspections or investigations...
to ex-CEO William C. Steere, regarding Trovan's compatibility with saline etc., which was omitted from Trovan's labeling until January 1999, shortly after Pfizer received the letter.
In June 1999, the FDA released a public health statement warning against the use of Trovan except in life-or-death situations, due to high risk of liver failure. In some cases, liver damage occurred after only two days of treatment.
In June 2010 the US Supreme Court rejected Pfizer's appeal against a ruling allowing lawsuits by the Nigerian families to proceed.
In December 2010 WikiLeaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...
released US diplomatic cables
United States diplomatic cables leak
The United States diplomatic cables leak, widely known as Cablegate, began in February 2010 when WikiLeaks—a non-profit organization that publishes submissions from anonymous whistleblowers—began releasing classified cables that had been sent to the U.S. State Department by 274 of its consulates,...
, which indicate that Pfizer had "used dirty tricks to avoid clinical trial payout". The company had hired investigators to find evidence of corruption against the Nigerian attorney general to persuade him to drop legal action. Washington Post reporter Joe Stephens, who helped break the story in 2000, called these actions "dangerously close to blackmail." In response the company has released a press statement describing the allegations as "preposterous" and stating that they acted in good faith.
Lawsuit over GMO virus
A scientist claims she was infected by a genetically modified virus while working for Pfizer. In her federal lawsuit she says she has been intermittently paralyzed by the Pfizer-designed virus. "McClain, of Deep River, suspects she was inadvertently exposed, through work by a former Pfizer colleague in 2002 or 2003, to an engineered form of the lentivirusLentivirus
Lentivirus is a genus of slow viruses of the Retroviridae family, characterized by a long incubation period...
, a virus similar to the one that can lead to acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS."
Blue Cross Blue Shield lawsuit
Health insurance company Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) filed a lawsuit against Pfizer for reportedly illegally marketing their drugs Bextra, Geodon and Lyrica. BCBS is reporting that Pfizer used "kickbacks" and wrongly persuaded doctors to prescribe the drugs. FiercePharma reported that "According to the suit, the drugmaker not only handed out those "misleading" materials on off-label uses, but sent doctors on Caribbean junkets and paid them $2,000 honoraria in return for their listening to lectures about Bextra. More than 5,000 healthcare professionals were entertained at meetings in Bahamas, Virgin Islands and across the U.S., the suit alleges." Pfizer has had similar cases brought against it which it has settled with the US federal government and with more than 40 US states. Pfizer denies the allegations.Wyeth's Rapamune
A "whistleblower suit" was filed in 2005 against WyethWyeth
Wyeth, formerly one of the companies owned by American Home Products Corporation , was a pharmaceutical company. The company was based in Madison, New Jersey, USA...
, which was acquired by Pfizer, alleging that the company illegally marketed their drug Rapamune. Wyeth is targeted in the suit for off-label marketing, targeting specific doctors and medical facilities to increased sales of Rapamune, trying to get current transplant patients to change from their current transplant drugs to Rapamune and for specifically targeting African-Americans. According to the whistleblowers, Wyeth also provided doctors and hospitals with kickbacks to prescribe the drug in the form of grants, donations and other money. A US House of Representatives committee, led by Rep. Edolphus Towns is currently investigating Pfizer for these abuses.
Research and development
Pfizer's human research and development organization is headquartered in New London, CT while their animal health research and development organization is headquartered in KalamazooKalamazoo, Michigan
The area on which the modern city stands was once home to Native Americans of the Hopewell culture, who migrated into the area sometime before the first millennium. Evidence of their early residency remains in the form of a small mound in downtown's Bronson Park. The Hopewell civilization began to...
, Michigan. The company has R&D labs in the following locations:
Groton
Groton, Connecticut
Groton is a town located on the Thames River in New London County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 39,907 at the 2000 census....
, Connecticut;
La Jolla, California;
South San Francisco
South San Francisco, California
South San Francisco is a city in San Mateo County, California, United States, located on the San Francisco Peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area...
, California;
Cambridge
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
, Massachusetts;
Kalamazoo
Kalamazoo, Michigan
The area on which the modern city stands was once home to Native Americans of the Hopewell culture, who migrated into the area sometime before the first millennium. Evidence of their early residency remains in the form of a small mound in downtown's Bronson Park. The Hopewell civilization began to...
, Michigan;
St. Louis
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
, Missouri. In La Jolla, Pfizer has 1,000 people with plans to create cancer drugs, a departure from the company's cardiovascular specialties.
The Sandwich
Sandwich, Kent
Sandwich is a historic town and civil parish on the River Stour in the Non-metropolitan district of Dover, within the ceremonial county of Kent, south-east England. It has a population of 6,800....
research center in England is currently closing.
Spending $8.1 billion in research & development (R&D) in 2007, Pfizer has the industry's largest pharmaceutical R&D organization: Pfizer Global Research and Development.
In 2007, Pfizer announced plans to close or sell on the Loughbeg API facility, located at Loughbeg, Ringaskiddy Co.Cork Ireland by mid to end of 2008
In 2007, Pfizer announced plans to completely close the Ann Arbor, Nagoya and Amboise Research facilities by the end of 2008, eliminating 2,160 jobs and idling the $300-million dollar Michigan facility, which had seen millions of dollars of expansion in recent years.
On June 18, 2007 Pfizer announced it will move the Sandwich
Sandwich
A sandwich is a food item, typically consisting of two or more slices of :bread with one or more fillings between them, or one slice of bread with a topping or toppings, commonly called an open sandwich. Sandwiches are a widely popular type of lunch food, typically taken to work or school, or...
, England Animal Health Research (VMRD) division to Kalamazoo, Michigan
Kalamazoo, Michigan
The area on which the modern city stands was once home to Native Americans of the Hopewell culture, who migrated into the area sometime before the first millennium. Evidence of their early residency remains in the form of a small mound in downtown's Bronson Park. The Hopewell civilization began to...
.
On February 1, 2011 Pfizer announced that it was to pull out of its UK Research and Development centre at Sandwich
Sandwich
A sandwich is a food item, typically consisting of two or more slices of :bread with one or more fillings between them, or one slice of bread with a topping or toppings, commonly called an open sandwich. Sandwiches are a widely popular type of lunch food, typically taken to work or school, or...
, Kent, with the loss of 2,400 jobs.
On September 1, 2011 Pfizer announced that it has agreed to a 10-year lease of more than 180,000 square feet of research space from MIT in a building to be constructed at 610 Main Street South, just north of the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US. The space will house Pfizer’s Cardiovascular, Metabolic and Endocrine Disease Research Unit and its Neuroscience Research Unit — and Pfizer anticipates moving into the space once it is completed in late 2013.
Pipeline:
- dimebonDimebonLatrepirdine , is an antihistamine drug which has been used clinically in Russia since 1983....
- tanezumabTanezumabTanezumab is a monoclonal antibody against nerve growth factor. It was developed by Pfizer as a treatment for pain.In 2009 there was a Phase III trial for knee pain due to osteoarthritis ....
Environmental record
According to the EPA, Pfizer is among the top ten companies in America with the most numerous emissions sources. A landfill and two wastewater lagoons in Ledyard, CT near the Pfizer plant in Groton, Connecticut, are a source of groundwater pollution in the area. According to the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection (CT DEP), the Pfizer site is active under the CT DEP Site Remediation program. In June 2002, a chemical explosion at the Groton plant injured seven people and caused the evacuation of over 100 homes in the surrounding area.Pfizer has provided funding to the Competitive Enterprise Institute
Competitive Enterprise Institute
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a non-profit think tank founded on March 9, 1984 in Washington, D.C. by lobbyist Fred L. Smith, Jr to advance economic liberty and fight over-regulation by big government...
Employment and diversity
Pfizer received a 100% rating on the Corporate Equality IndexCorporate Equality Index
The Corporate Equality Index is a report published by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation as a tool to rate American businesses on their treatment of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees, consumers and investors. Its primary source of data are surveys but researchers cross-check...
released by the Human Rights Campaign
Human Rights Campaign
The Human Rights Campaign is the United States' largest LGBT advocacy group and lobbying organization; according to the HRC, it has more than one million members and supporters...
starting in 2004, the third year of the report. In 2007, Pfizer's Canadian division was named one of Canada's Top 100 Employers
Canada's Top 100 Employers
Canada's Top 100 Employers is an annual competition that recognizes the best places in Canada to work. First held in 1999, the project aims to single out the employers that lead their industries in offering exceptional working conditions and progressive human resources policies. Winners are...
, as published in Maclean's
Maclean's
Maclean's is a Canadian weekly news magazine, reporting on Canadian issues such as politics, pop culture, and current events.-History:Founded in 1905 by Toronto journalist/entrepreneur Lt.-Col. John Bayne Maclean, a 43-year-old trade magazine publisher who purchased an advertising agency's in-house...
magazine, the only research-based pharmaceutical company to receive this honor. In 2008, there was controversy, including inquiries from members of Congress, around Pfizer's practice of replacing US workers with H-1b guest workers
AIDS involvement
Pfizer has been involved in controversies over the medicine Diflucan (generic name fluconazole). In 1998, a campaign by Thai public health groups led to the elimination of the Pfizer monopoly on selling fluconazole in Thailand, and the price of the antifungal drug decreased from 200 baht to 6.5 baht in nine months, vastly expanding access to the medicine for AIDS patients. Faced with pressure for compulsory licenses to the Pfizer patent on this drug, Pfizer later established a program for limited access to the medicine in Africa."In the United States, 46 percent of all new HIV/AIDS cases occur in the South. From 2003 to 2006 the Pfizer Foundation has funded 23 innovative HIV/AIDS prevention programs and strengthened the capacity of community-based organizations to reach and serve their communities." Since 2003, Pfizer has committed a $3 million grant toward supporting the Southern HIV/AIDS Prevention Initiative.
However, there were criticisms of the way Pfizer was testing its AIDS drug. "The European AIDS Treatment Group (EATG), collection of activists from 31 European Countries, said the design of the trial for Pfizer's CCR5 inhibitor maraviroc
Maraviroc
Maraviroc is an antiretroviral drug in the CCR5 receptor antagonist class used in the treatment of HIV infection. It is also classed as an entry inhibitor.-Mechanism of action:...
(previously known as UK-427,857) is putting people with HIV infection at unnecessary risk of developing AIDS."
On June 20, 2007, Pfizer received an approvable letter for maraviroc from the FDA advisory board. The letter was a product of expedited review of the novel HIV compound.
In 2001, Pfizer asked the U.S. government to pressure the Brazilian government against issuing compulsory licenses for the patents on the AIDS drug nelfinavir.
In November 2009 Pfizer formed a joint venture with GlaxoSmithKline to create ViiV Healthcare
ViiV Healthcare
ViiV Healthcare is a pharmaceutical company specializing in the development of therapies for HIV that was created as a joint venture by Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline in November 2009 with both companies transferring their HIV assets to the new company. 85% of the company is owned by GlaxoSmithKline...
. Viiv Healthcare received all of Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline's HIV assets.
AIDS drugs manufactured by Pfizer now ceded to ViiV Healthcare
- ViraceptNelfinavirNelfinavir is an antiretroviral drug used in the treatment of the human immunodeficiency virus . Nelfinavir belongs to the class of drugs known as protease inhibitors and like other PIs is generally used in combination with other antiretroviral drugs.Nelfinavir mesylate is a potent and orally...
(nelfinavir mesylate) - Selzentry/CelsentriMaravirocMaraviroc is an antiretroviral drug in the CCR5 receptor antagonist class used in the treatment of HIV infection. It is also classed as an entry inhibitor.-Mechanism of action:...
(maraviroc) - RescriptorDelavirdineDelavirdine is a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor marketed by ViiV Healthcare. It is used as part of highly active antiretroviral therapy for the treatment of human immunodeficiency virus type 1. It is presented as the mesylate...
(delavirdine mesylate)
See also
- Peter RostPeter Rost (doctor)Peter Rost, M.D. is a former vice president at the pharmaceutical company Pfizer and most well known for testifying in the United States Congress against the business methods of the pharmaceutical industry. He is also an author of the insider books, The Whistleblower: Confessions of a Healthcare...
- Viking BjorkViking BjorkViking Olov Björk was a Swedish cardiac surgeon.In 1968, he collaborated with American engineer Donald Shiley to develop the first "monostrut tilting disc valve" used to replace the aortic or mitral valve.The Bjork–Shiley heart valve was manufactured by Pfizer after they bought the Shiley company...
External links
- Pfizer UK Corporate Website
- Pfizer US Corporate Website
- Pfizer for Professionals Website
- Yahoo! – Pfizer Inc Company Profile
- Boston Globe "Pfizer Offers Discounts for the Uninsured"
- Pfizer Settlement Clears Asbestos Litigation Law.com
- Pfizer's savings program for people without prescription drug coverage Pfizer Helpful Answers
- Pfizer 4Q06 Earnings Press Release
- Barry Yeoman, Putting Science in the Dock, The Nation
- GlaxoSmithKline will overtake Pfizer to become world's largest pharmaceutical company by 2012 URCH Publishing (Press Release)
- Feds found Pfizer too big to nail CNN.com