Best selling pharmaceuticals

Natural products have been identified as the active principle of herbs and extracts used in folk medicine [1], The importance of natural products in the pharmaceutical industry has continued to the present day and is reflected by the fact that close to half of the best selling pharmaceuticals are either natural products (e.g. cyclosporine, Taxol, FK 506) or derivatives thereof [3]. In high throughput screening processes performed by the pharmaceutical industry natural product extracts exhibit a hit rate which is estimated to be substantially higher than the hit rate of random libraries from combinatorial chemistry. Natural products such as epothilones, discodermolide or ecteinascidin are promising clinical candidates for future cancer treatment. 

Table 6.1 The world s best selling pharmaceuticals (sales > US 1 billion in 1997)...

Table 6.5. Drugs derived from low-molecular-weight fermentation products which, in 1990, were amongst the world s top-50 best-selling pharmaceutical ...

It is widely discussed that the selling price of pharmaceuticals in the EU is substantially below that of the same drags in the US due to the ability of each country to directly negotiate prices with the seller. For example, in a 2005 survey of the 150 best selling pharmaceuticals, the prices of these drags varied considerably in Europe in Spain and Italy they were around half of US prices f24, Table IVi. The study also revealed that the situation was different when the prices of biologies were considered. Whereas European priees averaged 88% of US prices, the prices in Japan were almost the same. 

SCHEME 46.54. Sulfur-containing best-selling pharmaceuticals. 

The search for inhibitors of this pathway began with the first key regulatory enzyme, HMG CoA reductase. Several clinically useful inhibitors of HMG CoA reductase are now known. One of the most successful, Mevacor, produced by Merck, is one of the pharmaceutical industry s best selling products. However, the problem with inhibiting a branched biosynthetic pathway at an early point is that the biosynthesis of other crucial biomolecules may also be inhibited. Indeed, there is some evidence that levels of ubiquinone and the dolichols are affected by some HMG CoA reductase inhibitors. Consequently, efforts have recently been directed towards finding inhibitors of squalene synthase, the enzyme controlling the first step on the route to cholesterol after the FPP branch point. 

Despite the sharp increase in development cost, the number of new products launched and their sales expectations remained fairly constant (Lumley and Walker, 1992). It has been calculated that in the UK even the best selling 10% new drugs require longer than the effective life-span of their patents to recover the research and development cost the majority of new pharmaceuticals cannot recoup these cost even after more than 20 years (Prentis et al., 1988). 

Fishing is probably the best way to describe how to sell pharmaceuticals, gadgets, or products. 

Atorvastatin became the best selling active pharmaceutical ingredient worldwide. 

In Asia, the life expectancy of a human was 40 years in 1960, which increased to 68 years in 2013 and will increase to 78 years in 2050/ In all the possible positive effects to increase lifetime, the development of pharmaceuticals plays a crucial role. Importantly, most of the best selling drugs contain a heterocyclic moiety as their core structure. Additionally, more than 90% of naturally occurring compounds have a heterocyclic structure. Based on this importance of heterocycles, their preparation has become one of the main branches in modern organic synthesis. Although the current trend in methodology development is C-H activation, the requirements of reaction efficiency and functional group tolerance mean that the pharmaceutical industry still have to look at double-functionalized aromatic compounds. 

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