Pfizer Incorporated is a pharmaceutical company, ranking number one in sales in the world.

The company is based in New York City, with its headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, New York City and research headquarters in Groton, Connecticut, USA. At Pfizer,they apply science and our global resources to improve health and well-being at every stage of life.they strive to set the standard for quality, safety and value in the discovery, development and manufacturing of medicines for people and animals. their diversified global health care portfolio includes human and animal biologic and small molecule medicines and vaccines, as well as nutritional products and many of the world's best-known consumer products. Every day, Pfizer colleagues work across developed and emerging markets to advance wellness, prevention, treatments and cures that challenge the most feared diseases of our time. Consistent with their responsibility as the world's leading biopharmaceutical company,they also collaborate with health care providers, governments and local communities to support and expand access to reliable, affordable health care around the world. For more than 150 years, Pfizer has worked to make a difference for all who rely on them. History Pfizer is named after German-American cousins Charles Pfizer and Charles Erhardt (they were originally from Ludwigsburg, Germany) who launched a fine chemicals business, Charles Pfizer And Company, 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. 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.

Pfizer Limited (India) has a turnover of US$ 159.52 million (November 2009)

One of the highest spenders in pharmaceutical R&D globally, Pfizer has made clinical research investments of US$ 6.05 million (November 2009) in India

The company was awarded the FICCI SEDF (Socio Economic Development Foundation) Certificate of Commendation for its social responsibility efforts

Pfizer has won several awards including that for the multinational pharmaceutical company of the year and the most respected MNC

Pfizer has:

11 products currently with sales of more than $1 billion.

14 products currently ranked at the top of their respective therapeutic areas.

A proven history of establishing new therapeutic market opportunitiessuch as

ARICEPT (donepezil HCl) and VIAGRA (sildenafil citrate).

A history of: Pfizer

Posted 1st October 2010 in Articles | 4 comments

Robin Walsh pharmaphorum Pfizer was founded in 1849 by two recent German immigrants to the USA, Charles Pfizer and Charles Erhart. Both in their mid-twenties, the two men set up what was initially a fine chemicals business in a Brooklyn factory, using a loan from Pfizers father as capital. The companys first product, a palatable anti-parasitic drug, made to taste like toffee, united Pfizers skills as a chemist with Erharts training as a confectioner. It was a success, and set the pattern for the companys future development. The convulsion of the American Civil War which broke out soon after in 1862 had as much of an impact on the nascent pharmaceutical industry as on American society in general. The first industrial war involved drug producers as much as weapons manufacturers. Like their competitor Squibb, the sudden need for enormous quantities of painkillers and antiseptics for the Union armies provided a great scope to expand production. By 1868, Pfizers revenues had doubled since the start of the war, and their product lines had expanded greatly. After the war, Pfizer continued to focus on industrial chemicals as much as medicines, producing the citric acid needed for the emerging soft drinks industry, fuelling brands like Coca Cola and Dr Peppers expansion in the 1880s. This became their mainstay for many years, laying the basis for their continued growth. Also, when supply of tartaric acid was disrupted due to the civil war and increased tariffs, Pfizer developed its production to become the leading supplier of chemicals in the US.

The first industrial war involved drug producers as much as weapons manufacturers.
Erhart died in 1891, and Pfizer in 1906, leaving a company of around 200 employees in the hands of Emil Pfizer, who served as president until the 1940s, the last member of the Pfizer

family to be involved in managing the company. Under his stewardship, Pfizers expertise in scientific production methods developed greatly. In 1919 their scientists pioneered mould fermentation production of citric acid from molasses, freeing their citric acid business from European citrus fruit supplies, which had been disrupted by the First World War. They developed a deep tank fermentation process, the principles of which would later be applied to the production of penicillin. As a consequence of Pfizers innovation, the price of citric acid tumbled over the succeeding decades, with the value of the chemical falling by 5/6ths in 20 years. In 1936 the company discovered a fermentation free method of producing vitamin C, which they rapidly expanded into vitamins B2 and B12 amongst others, rapidly becoming a leading vitamin producer chemicals that were very novel at the time. This expertise in fermentation and large-scale pharmaceutical production put Pfizer in good stead when in 1941 the US government appealed to the pharma industry for support in producing penicillin for the war effort. In an unprecedented collaboration, Pfizer worked with government scientists, the researchers such as Frederick Banting who had been working on the drug before the war, and a plethora of other players in the industry to markedly improve the efficiency of drug production; as they proudly state most of the penicillin that [went] ashore with Allied force on D-Day [was] made by Pfizer. Antibiotics marked the transition to the modern Pfizer. Their follow-up to penicillin, Terramycin, first marketed in 1950, was both their first proprietary drug, and the first for which the company used sales reps; their soon to be formidable force of salesmen starting with just eight members. Pfizer initiated its first major internationalisation at this stage, moving into nine new countries in 1951. It was at this time they set their site at Sandwich in the UK, initially just to finish processing compounds imported from America, but due to tariffs on imported products the company rapidly expanded the plant to accommodate producing medicines from scratch. Pfizers international expansion put great trust in their local staff compared to other organisations, recruiting nationals and giving them a great deal of autonomy.

Lipitorbecame the biggest-selling prescription medicine ever, earning Pfizer $12 billion a year in 2007, one quarter of its total sales.
The areas that Pfizer directed its research into expanded in these years as well. In 1952, it established its Agricultural Division, beginning its foray into animal health, and in 1953 acquired Roerig, a nutritional supplement specialist, which became incorporated as a division in its own right. By the 1960s, Pfizer were at their most diversified point in [its] history in its own words, its interests stretched from pills to perfume, and petrochemicals to pet products.

Throughout the 60s and 70s the company continued to bring out new drugs, such as the broad spectrum antibiotic Vibramycin, and broadening its research base, reorganising its R&D operations in 1971 into a Central Research Division, and increasing spend on this area of the company from 5% to 15% of revenue. This attention to innovation began to pay off in the 1980s, with a series of blockbusters, the first of which, the COX inhibitor Feldene, arrived in 1980 rapidly becoming one of the biggest-selling anti-inflammatories in the world. Others rapidly followed, including Glucotrol, aimed at diabetics, and Procardia, an anti-hypertensive. The 1990s and 2000s would soon take this blockbuster-based success to new levels. The statin Lipitor, approved in 1997 for Warner-Lambert before their merger with Pfizer, became the biggest-selling prescription medicine ever, earning Pfizer $US12 billion a year in 2007, one quarter of its total sales. It almost hadnt made it through clinical development, facing problems with ineffective chiral isomers and limited efficacy in animal testing, but showed such impact in human trials that it blew the competition away. Other big sellers in recent years have included Lyrica for neuropathic pain, the Coxib Celebrex, as well as the oncology drug Sutent. But Pfizers almost Hollywood-level blockbuster of the 1990s was the little blue pill of Viagra, which achieved such levels of public recognition that were all receiving the spam emails about it over ten years later. Formulated initially at the Sandwich site in the UK as an antihypertensive, it was found have unexpected side effects that made the company rapidly change the indication to erectile dysfunction. But despite the cultural ubiquity, Viagra has recently faced the inevitable threat from competition and generics, dropping from 92% of the ED market in 2000 to around 50% in 2007, with vigorous competition from drugs such as Cialis and Levitra.

Pfizer is the 6th largest lobbier in Washington, and spent $25 million on lobbying during the passing of Obamas healthcare reform legislation alone.
Since the turn of the millennium, Pfizer has embarked on a series of mega-mergers; gobbling up Warner-Lambert in 2000, Pharmacia & Upjohn in 2002, and most recently Wyeth in 2009. The sheer size of the organisation today is mindboggling, totalling well over 100,000 employees. One commentator compared the companys 38,000 sales reps to three army divisions; a sales team that is soon to be immortalised in a Hollywood rom-com of all things Love and Other Drugs, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway. Pfizer has experienced challenges in recent years that have matched its size; with more than $2 billion in legal settlement payments over marketing practices for drugs in 2009, it has also closed a large number of manufacturing and R&D sites worldwide and has announced plans for anything up to 20,000 redundancies following the merger with Wyeth. Pfizer, like many other big pharma companies, is experiencing pipeline difficulties too, with drugs accounting for 40%

of its sales coming off patent in the next couple of years, and a series of high-profile failures of drugs in development, such as the anti-cholesterol drug torcetrapib that caused a marked increase in deaths compared with the control group in clinical trials. The news of this disastrous result came days after CEO Jeff Kindler had hailed the drug as potentially one of the most important compounds of our generation. Likewise, tanezumab, an anti-osteoarthritic, failed in trials, and there have been some setbacks in oncology. However, these challenges in the core mission of drug discovery have lead Pfizer to focus on other means of keeping up its dominant position. One thing that highlighted this changed focus was the appointment of Kindler as CEO in 2006. Kindler was trained as a lawyer, and was a relatively new employee when he was given the top job in preference to others of much longer standing with scientific experience, highlighting the increasing importance of legal and marketing issues over traditional R&D. Perhaps unsurprisingly for the biggest company in one of the biggest industries in the world, Pfizer has also been proficient in exerting its considerable political influence to preserve its interests, coming in as the 6th largest lobbier in Washington, and spending $US 25 million on lobbying during the passing of Obamas healthcare reform legislation alone. It has been key in pushing counterfeit drugs up the political agenda, in part due to its ownership of that most counterfeited of drugs, Viagra. It has also been highly critical of parallel trade, and has been one of those militating for a pharmaceutical repackaging ban in the EU. Despite this political clout, more recently the company has been trying to belay its image as a pharma monster, like many others in the industry, by spending generously on charity, donating AIDS drugs both to poor communities in the US, and to developing countries. And in conclusion, despite its troubles, Pfizers sheer diversity and economies of scale mean it will have the power to shape the pharmaceutical industry well into the 21st century. With fingers in every pie, ranging from small molecules to biologics in every clinical area, to stem cells and consumer goods, Pfizer will surely celebrate its 200th anniversary in as strong a position as it spent the last 160 years.