Pfizer is one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Each year Pfizer puts on sale hundreds of pharmaceutical preparations. Most of them proved high efficiency in more then thousands clinical studies and became number one selling on the world pharmaceutical market. Norvasc, Viagra, Zoloft, Diflucan, Celebrex became the most prescribed drugs manufactured by Pfizer in the USA as well as in Europe, Asia and South America.
Since Pfizer was established by two German cousins in 1849, pharmaceutical company has been continuing to develop and discover new and better approaches in the prevention and treatment of many diseases. In 2007 Pfizer has spent more than 8 billion of US dollars in research & development (R&D) and today it is largest pharmaceutical R&D organization called Pfizer Global Research and Development.
The history of Pfizer begins in 1849 year when two cousins Charles Pfizer, a chemist, and Charles Erhart, a confectioner, founded a chemical company in the New York City in Brooklyn . The Charles. Pfizer and Company has begun its work with the manufacturing of chemicals, including refined camphor, tartar and borax. The first medication manufactured by Pfizer was santonin, an antiparasitic drug used to treat intestinal worms. Santonin shaped into a candy cone and blended with almond-toffee flavoring has a great success and brought a big profit to Pfizer.
During the Civil War, Pfizer extends output of tartaric acid (that was used as a laxative medication and s coolant of the skin) and tartar cream (cleaning agent) as well as other essential medicines to help satisfy the needs of the Union Army. Among these were camphor ,iodine, morphine and chloroform.
A bit later Pfizer introduced a mass production of citric acid. Citric acid had many industrial and medical applications.
During World War 2 American Army was in a great demand for anti infection drug. One of such "miracle medicine" became penicillin, that was discovered by Sir A.Fleming in 1928 in London. However , only in 1942 year Pfizer became the first who introduced production of penicillin in a large scale. Since 1945 Pfizer became the largest manufacturer of Penicillin. After the World War II Pfizer expends it global influence by establishing new factories in West Europe, England, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Iran and Turkey.
The period between 1980s and 1990s years is distinguished by an immediate growth of company related to discovery of new successful medicines: Norvasc, Zoloft, Lipitor, Diflucan, Viagra and others.
Norvasc is a widely prescribed medication for the treatment of high blood pressure, and in 2006 the income from Norvasc reached 4.71 bln. US dollars for the company. Norvasc was developed in the 1980s. Originally the Norvasc active ingredient was amlodipine maleate , however, Pfizer has decided to replace maleate to amlodipine besylate due to chemical instability that was observed in the original formula the fact that it was disrupt by direct compression on high-speed tablet presses.
The company had to completely renounce its maleate formulation, that had already reached the third Phase of clinical studies. Developing the besylate formulation would have required repeated studies to obtain approval from the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and primarily risked to delay the commercial launch of Norvasc.
Finally, however, this replacement settled all debts, and Pfizer was able to manufacture large commercial series of amlodipine besylate tablets by direct compression ,that had proved difficult with amlodipine maleate.
In 2004 Norvasc reached nearly 65 % of all calcium channel blocker on the world pharmaceutical market.
