Pfizer


Pfizer Inc. is an American multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporation headquartered at The Spiral in Manhattan, New York City. Founded in 1849 in New York by German entrepreneurs Charles Pfizer and Charles F. Erhart, Pfizer is one of the oldest pharmaceutical companies in North America.
Pfizer develops and produces medication and vaccines for immunology, oncology, cardiology, endocrinology, and neurology. The company's largest products by sales are Eliquis , Prevnar , Paxlovid , Vyndaqel , Comirnaty , and Ibrance . In 2024, 61% of the company's revenues came from the United States, 4% came from China, and 35% came from other countries.
The company is ranked fifth on the list of largest biomedical companies by revenue. It is ranked the 69th on the Fortune 500 and 73rd on the Forbes Global 2000.

History

1849–1950: Early history

Pfizer was founded in 1849 as "Charles Pfizer & Company" by Charles Pfizer and Charles F. Erhart, two cousins who had immigrated to the United States from Ludwigsburg, Germany. The business produced chemical compounds, and was headquartered on Bartlett Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where they produced an antiparasitic called santonin. This was an immediate success, although it was production of citric acid that led to Pfizer's growth in the 1880s. Pfizer continued to buy property in the area to expand its lab and factory, retaining offices on Flushing Avenue until the 1960s; the Brooklyn plant ultimately closed in 2009. Following their success with citric acid, Pfizer and Erhart established their main residences in the nearby Clinton Hill district, known for its concentration of Gilded Age wealth.
In 1881, Pfizer moved its administrative headquarters to 81 Maiden Lane in Manhattan, presaging the company's expansion to Chicago, Illinois, a year later. By 1906 sales exceeded $3million.
World War I caused a shortage of calcium citrate. Pfizer imported the compound from Italy for the manufacture of citric acid, and due to the disruption in supply, the company began a search for an alternative. They found this in the form of a fungus capable of fermenting sugar to citric acid. By 1919, the company was able to commercialize production of citric acid from this source. The company developed expertise in fermentation technology as a result. These skills were applied to the deep-submergence mass production of penicillin, an antibiotic, during World War II in response to the need to treat injured Allied soldiers. The company also embarked on a global soil collection program related to improving production yields of penicillin which ultimately resulted in 135,000 samples.
On June 2, 1942, the company incorporated under the Delaware General Corporation Law.

1950–1980: Pivot to pharmaceutical research and global expansion

Due to price declines for penicillin, Pfizer searched for new antibiotics with greater profit potential. Pfizer discovered oxytetracycline in 1950, and this changed the company from a manufacturer of fine chemicals to a research-based pharmaceutical company. Pfizer developed a drug discovery program focused on in vitro synthesis to augment its research in fermentation technology. In 1959, the company established an animal health division with a farm and research facility in Terre Haute, Indiana.
By the 1950s, Pfizer had established offices in Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, and the United Kingdom. In 1960, the company moved its medical research laboratory operations out of New York City to a new facility in Groton, Connecticut. In 1980, Pfizer launched Feldene, a prescription anti-inflammatory medication that became Pfizer's first product to reach $1billion in revenue.
In 1965, John Powers, Jr. became chief executive officer of the company, succeeding John McKeen.
As the area surrounding its Brooklyn, NY plant fell into decline in the 1970s and 1980s, the company formed a public-private partnership with New York City that encompassed the construction of low- and middle-income housing, the refurbishment of apartment buildings for the homeless and the establishment of a charter school.
In 1972, Edmund T. Pratt Jr. became chief executive officer of the company, succeeding John Powers, Jr.

1980–2000: Development of Viagra, Zoloft, and Lipitor

In 1981, the company received approval for Diflucan, the first oral treatment for severe fungal infections including candidiasis, blastomycosis, coccidiodomycosis, cryptococcosis, histoplasmosis, dermatophytosis, and pityriasis versicolor.
In 1986, Pfizer acquired the worldwide rights to Zithromax, a macrolide antibiotic that is recommended by the Infectious Disease Society of America as a first line treatment for certain cases of community-acquired pneumonia, from Pliva.
In 1989, Pfizer scientists Peter Dunn and Albert Wood created Viagra for treating high blood pressure and angina, a chest pain associated with coronary artery disease. In 1991, it was patented in the United Kingdom as a heart medication. Early trials for the medication showed that it did not work for the treatment of heart disease, but volunteers in the clinical trials had increased erections several days after taking the drug. It was patented in the United States in 1996 and received approval by the Food and Drug Administration in March 1998. In December 1998, Pfizer hired Bob Dole as a spokesperson for the drug. The patents for Viagra expired in 2020.
In 1991, William C. Steere, Jr. became chief executive officers of the company, succeeding Edmund T. Pratt Jr.
In 1991 Pfizer also began marketing Zoloft, an antidepressant of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor class developed nine years earlier by Pfizer chemists Kenneth Koe and Willard Welch. Sertraline is primarily prescribed for major depressive disorder in adult outpatients as well as obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, and social anxiety disorder in both adults and children. In 2005, the year before it became a generic drug, sales were over $3billion and over 100million people had been treated with the drug. The patent for Zoloft expired in the summer of 2006.
In 1996, Eisai, in partnership with Pfizer, received approval from the Food and Drug Administration for donepezil under the brand Aricept for treatment of Alzheimer's disease; Pfizer also received approval for Norvasc, an antihypertensive drug of the dihydropyridine calcium channel blocker class.
File:Zoloft bottles.jpg|thumb|right|Bottles of Zoloft, an antidepressant
In 1997, the company entered into a co-marketing agreement with Warner–Lambert for Lipitor, a statin for the treatment of hypercholesterolemia. Although atorvastatin was the fifth statin to be developed, clinical trials showed that atorvastatin caused a more dramatic reduction in low-density lipoprotein pattern C than the other statin drugs. Upon its patent expiration in 2011, Lipitor was the best-selling drug ever, with approximately $125billion in sales over 14.5 years.

2000–2010: Further expansion

In 2001, Henry McKinnell became chief executive officer of the company, replacing William C. Steere, Jr.
In 2002, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation purchased stock in Pfizer.
In 2004, the company received approval for Lyrica, an anticonvulsant and anxiolytic medication used to treat epilepsy, neuropathic pain, fibromyalgia, restless leg syndrome, and generalized anxiety disorder. The United States patent on Lyrica was challenged by generic manufacturers and was upheld in 2014, extending the expiration date to 2018.
In July 2006, Jeff Kindler was named chief executive officer of the company, replacing Henry McKinnell.
On December 3, 2006, Pfizer ceased development of torcetrapib, a drug that increases production of HDL, which reduces LDL thought to be correlated to heart disease. During a Phase III clinical trial involving 15,000 patients, more deaths than expected occurred in the group that took the medicine, and the mortality rate of patients taking the combination of torcetrapib and Lipitor was 60% higher than those taking Lipitor alone. Lipitor alone was not implicated in the results, but Pfizer lost nearly $1billion developing the failed drug and its stock price dropped 11% on the day of the announcement.
Between 2007 and 2010, Pfizer spent $3.3million on investigations and legal fees and recovered about $5.1million, and had another $5million of pending recoveries from civil lawsuits against makers of counterfeit prescription drugs. Pfizer has hired customs and narcotics experts worldwide to track down fakes and assemble evidence that can be used to pursue civil suits for trademark infringement.
In July 2008, Pfizer announced 275 job cuts at its manufacturing facility in Portage, Michigan. Portage was previously the world headquarters of Upjohn Company, which had been acquired as part of Pharmacia.

Acquisitions and mergers

In June 2000, Pfizer acquired Warner-Lambert outright for $116billion. To satisfy conditions imposed by antitrust regulators at the Federal Trade Commission, Pfizer sold off or transferred stakes in several minor products, including RID and Warner-Lambert's antidepressant Celexa. The acquisition created what was, at the time, the second-largest pharmaceutical company worldwide.
In 2003, Pfizer merged with Pharmacia, and in the process acquired Searle and SUGEN. Searle had developed Flagyl, a nitroimidazole antibiotic medication used particularly for anaerobic bacteria and protozoa. Searle also developed celecoxib a COX-2 inhibitor and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug used to treat the pain and inflammation in osteoarthritis, acute pain in adults, rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, painful menstruation, and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. SUGEN, a company focused on protein kinase inhibitors, had pioneered the use of ATP-mimetic small molecules to block signal transduction. The SUGEN facility was shut down in 2003 by Pfizer, with the loss of more than 300 jobs, and several programs were transferred to Pfizer. These included sunitinib, a cancer medication which was approved for human use by the FDA in January 2006. A related compound, SU11654, was also approved for cancer in dogs, and the ALK inhibitor Crizotinib also grew out of a SUGEN program.
In October 2006, the company announced it would acquire PowerMed.
On October 15, 2009, Pfizer acquired Wyeth for $68billion in cash and stock, including the assumption of debt, making Pfizer the largest pharmaceutical company in the world. The acquisition of Wyeth provided Pfizer with a pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, trademarked Prevnar 13; this is used for the prevention of invasive pneumococcal infections. The introduction of the original, 7-valent version of the vaccine, developed by Wyeth in February 2000, led to a 75% reduction in the incidence of invasive pneumococcal infections among children under age5 in the United States. Pfizer introduced an improved version of the vaccine in 2010, for which it was granted a patent in India in 2017. Prevnar 13 provides coverage of 13 bacterial variants, expanding beyond the original 7-valent version. By 2012, the rate of invasive infections among children under age5 had been reduced by an additional 50%.