Pfizer shows mettle, to launch 240 drugs

While Pfizer, the world's largest pharmaceutical company, is being criticised for its inability to come up with blockbuster drugs, its global research and development head said the company was working on one of its largest ever assemblage of drugs.

"Pfizer is developing about 240 potential drugs, including those in the pre-clinical stage, and new indications for existing drugs," said John L Mattina, president of Pfizer Global Research and Development and senior vice-president, Pfizer Inc.

"This is one of the largest ever drug pipelines in the history of Pfizer," he said on the sidelines of a function to inaugurate the R&D complex of Bilcare, a pharmaceutical packaging company, in Pune, yesterday.

"It may not be possible to come up with a $13 billion drug like Lipitor (world's largest ever selling drug, for cholesterol reduction). But we have exciting new drugs like the smoking cessation drug Chantix, and Lyrica indicated for multiple disease cure," he added.

Pfizer had given information about 100 drugs under various stages of development across 11 therapeutic categories, including 85 new molecular entities and 14 additional indications, according to the drug pipeline update as of July 2007.

Usually, big pharmaceutical companies disclose details only on the drugs that are in to the clinical trial stage. Pfizer has 38 programmes in the first phase of clinical trials, 47 in phase II and 11 drugs in the phase III advanced clinical trial stages. The company has discontinued about 13 programmes in the recent period.

A few months ago, Pfizer had to discontinue an advanced non-small cell lung cancer drug in the final stages of clinical trials and withdrew Exubera, a much-anticipated inhaled powder insulin after 11 years of development and one full year of sales which attracted poor revenues.

In December 2006, Pfizer dumped torcetrapib, a high profile promising cholesterol drug, during the clinical trial stage. Pfizer's hopes were pinned on this drug to replace Lipitor, which will face generic competition as early as 2010, mainly from Ranbaxy. Due to the expiring patents, Pfizer has projected loses in excess of $14 billion by 2012.

Pfizer spends more than $7 billion a year ($ 7.6 billion in 2006) in R&D, and a significant portion of this investment will go to countries like India, China and Singapore in the years ahead. Pfizer's future strategy would be to increasingly look at collaborative research and alliances to contain drug development costs, said Mattina.

"India will be one of our key focus areas in the future, and we are already talking to Indian companies. Currently, we conduct clinical trials of about 44 compounds in India, involving 143 clinical trial sites with an enrollment of more than 1,800 patients."

He said it was the quality of services rather than the cost savings that attracted Pfizer to India. However, India needs to strengthen its intellectual property rules to gain more confidence of companies like Pfizer.

"India has the potential to create an explosion in the field of pharmaceutical services, similar to what it did in the field of IT," he said.

STRATEGIC MOVE

Pfizer's R&D spends exceed $7 bn a year and a major portion of it will reach India and China

The MNC has 38 programmes in the first phase of clinical trials, 47 in phase II and 11 drugs in phase III advanced trial stages