"TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Lipitor, the best-selling drug in the history of pharmaceuticals, is the blockbuster that almost wasn't.
When it was in development, the cholesterol-lowering medicine was viewed as such an also-ran it almost didn't make it into patient testing.
By the time Lipitor went on sale in early 1997, it was the fifth drug in a class called statins that lower LDL or bad cholesterol. The class already included three blockbusters, drugs with sales of $1 billion a year or more. Normally, that would make it very tough for a latecomer to sway many doctors and patients to switch.
But a 1996 study showed Lipitor reduced bad cholesterol dramatically more than the other statins, from the very start of treatment and even more so over time. A striking graph of those results helped Lipitor sales representatives turn it into the world's best-selling drug ever, with more than $125 billion in sales over 14 1/2 years."
When it was in development, the cholesterol-lowering medicine was viewed as such an also-ran it almost didn't make it into patient testing.
By the time Lipitor went on sale in early 1997, it was the fifth drug in a class called statins that lower LDL or bad cholesterol. The class already included three blockbusters, drugs with sales of $1 billion a year or more. Normally, that would make it very tough for a latecomer to sway many doctors and patients to switch.
But a 1996 study showed Lipitor reduced bad cholesterol dramatically more than the other statins, from the very start of treatment and even more so over time. A striking graph of those results helped Lipitor sales representatives turn it into the world's best-selling drug ever, with more than $125 billion in sales over 14 1/2 years."
No comments:
Post a Comment