Pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline

The development of a new drug is both a time-consuming and a cost-intensive process. It takes 12 to 15 years and costs up to 800 million to bring a new drug to the market. As measured by the market capitalization, the pharmaceutical companies play a pivotal role in the global economy. In February 2003 Pfizer was ranked at position five worldwide, with a market capitalization of 163 billion. Ranking third as far as the market capitalization in Europe is concerned was GlaxoSmithKline, with a current value of 101 billion. Novartis was number five in Europe with 82 billion. 

The search for an effective non-peptide oxytocin antagonist has become a major goal of a number of pharmaceutical companies because of the poor pharmacokinetic properties and especially the lack of oral bioavailability associated with peptidic antagonists. Early research in this field was dominated by Merck, but in recent years significant research efforts at GlaxoSmithKline and Serono have been published. A number of other companies, notably Sanofi-Aventis, Yamanouchi and Wyeth, have had a major presence in vasopressin receptor research and oxytocin is frequently included in patent claims for the molecules. Occasionally, oxytocin-selective compounds have been reported, usually derived by adaptation of the vasopressin antagonist template. 

The present review illustrates that UV-vis based process analytical technology is widely discussed, but published examples are still scarce. The pharmaceutical industry, driven by the FDA s PAT initiative, can be seen as a forerunner. This is reflected by the observation that many references in this chapter are (co-) authored by representatives from pharmaceutical companies like Glaxo Wellcome and GlaxoSmithKline, ° " ° Astra Zeneca, Novartis and Eli Lilly. ... 

The Green Chemistry Institute (GCl) Pharmaceutical Roundtable has used the Process Mass Intensity (PMl) [12], defined as the total mass used in a process divided by the mass of product (i.e. PMl = E factor -i- 1) to benchmark the environmental acceptability of processes used by its members (see the GCl website). The latter include several leading pharmaceutical companies (Eh Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Merck, AstraZeneca, Schering-Plow, and Johnson Johnson). The aim was to use this data to drive the greening of the pharmaceutical industry. We believe, however, that the E factor is to be preferred over the PMl since the ideal E factor of 0 is a better reflection of the goal of zero waste. 

Similar observations can be made of individual pharmaceutical companies. Table 3.2 displays the top 10 frequently used solvents in GlaxoSmithKline s manufacturing operations during the period 1995-2000, as reported by Constable, which accounted for more than 80% of their solvent usage [3]. The solvent usage in GSK s pilot plant processes carried out in 2005 is also given for comparison. 

Increased safety warnings attached to some drugs (such as Roche s Accutane and GlaxoSmithKline s Paxil) and the complete market withdrawal of others (for example, Merck Co s Vioxx) have undermined consumer confidence in both the pharmaceutical industry and the products it produces. As a result, consumers now question whether pharmaceutical companies have their best interests in mind when marketing a product. 

Business case studies expanding on the areas covered in the survey, and written by sustainability leaders in major companies with chemical operations, including DuPont, Shell, BASF, GlaxoSmithKline as one major pharmaceutical company, and 3M as a major customer of chemicals. 

NH—C—NH2, which is a far stronger base than a simple amine, because the positive charge of its conjugate acid is highly delocalized by resonance (Section 21-6). This compound became the drug zanamivir, now marketed as Relenza by the GlaxoSmithKline pharmaceutical company. Relenza is quite likely to be the front-line antiviral compound in the worldwide effort to prepare for a bird flu outbreak. 

Traditionally, pharmaceutical companies are classified between a small number of big MNCs that do research and development (R D) for new drugs and aim to get these patented, and a large number of smaller generics companies that manufacture products that are not patented or products for which patents have expired. The MNCs are exceptionally large in size. The head offices are located in developed countries, mainly in the US, the UK, Switzerland, France, and Germany. They operate all over the world. The largest pharmaceutical MNC, Novartis (headquarters Basel, Switzerland) reported US 46 billion in pharmaceutical sales in 2013. Each of the other top five MNCs - Pfizer (US), Roche (Switzerland), Sanofi (France), Merck (US) and GlaxoSmithKline (UK) - individually had sales worth more than the entire pharmaceutical market of the Middle East and Africa in 2013. ... 

The environment for intellectual property protection is still a concern in China. Pharmaceutical companies ve been alarmed by the 2004 legal decision to overturn the Chinese patent for Pfizer s Viagra (sildenafil citrate). This was followed by a case where GlaxoSmithKline stepped back from defending its patent in China for rosiglitazone, the active ingredient of its anti-diabetes drug Avandia. 

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