Lipitor discovery

The race to find the next blockbuster has never been more important in the pharmaceutical industry. The very existence of many companies may depend on the timely discovery of new chemical entities that can be developed into the next Celebrex or Lipitor . Adding to this is the need to reduce cost and increase shareholder value. Consequently, the productivity of the pharmaceutical industry has dramatically fallen short of its own expectations (1). 

Just as in life, five-membered heterocycles are of utmost importance to drug discovery. The most conspicuous of all is probably atorvastatin (Lipitor), an HMG-CoA inhibitor. Another bioactive pyrrole shown below is an antipsychotic agent. 

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