TRENTON, N.J. — Lipitor, the best-selling drug in the history of pharmaceuticals, is the blockbuster that almost wasn’t. While 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 drugs with sales of $1 billion a year or more.
But a 1996 study showed Lipitor reduced bad cholesterol dramatically more than the other statins. Lipitor became the world’s best-selling drug ever, with more than $125 billion in sales over 14 1/2 years.
After nearly a decade as the top-selling drug, Lipitor is set to be toppled in 2012 after getting its first generic rivals four weeks ago. It’s a run not likely to be repeated.
“Those other companies didn’t even take us seriously. They didn’t think we could be a viable contender,” said Adele Gulfo, then head of cardiovascular marketing at Warner-Lambert who now heads Pfizer’s primary-care drugs business. The Associated Press
