BLOCKBUSTER DRUGS - Hardcover

LI

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199737681 ISBN 13: 9780199737680

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2014

Synopsis

Examines the cases of several historic and high-profile drugs in order to discuss the future of the pharmaceutical industry.

About this title

About the Author

Dr. Jie Jack Li is currently an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of San Francisco. Before his independent academic career, he spent fifteen years in drug discovery at big pharma including Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. He is the author of Triumph of the Heart: The Story of Statins (Oxford University Press, 2009), Modern Organic Synthesis in the Laboratory (Oxford University Press, 2007), and Laughing Gas, Viagra, and Lipitor: The Human Stories Behind the Drugs We Use (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Reviews

Li (Laughing Gas, Viagra and Lipitor: The Human Stories Behind the Drugs We Use) surveys Big Pharma's €œgolden age€� with a nostalgic yet thoughtful history of the science and personalities behind drugs that changed the lives of countless patients while making billions of dollars for the companies that brought them to market. The author examines five classes of blockbusters that gave Big Pharma both esteem and fortunes: from Tagament and Prilosec for peptic ulcers to blockbuster allergy treatments such as Benadryl and Claritin, to blood thinners that refined old-line heparin, to the modern conquest of pain with drugs descended from opium—€œone of the first medicines for man.€� Li also engagingly relates the tales of the human conflict often involved with discovery, like a precipitous one-year drop in profits that resulted from a feud between an American drug company and one of its Canadian counterparts. Drug discovery is now getting more attention from academia as new products wane, Li notes, but he decries Big Pharma's €œmerger mania€� and its tarnished reputation, especially following Merck's abrupt withdrawal of anti-inflammatory Vioxx because it led to increased risk of heart attacks and strokes among those taking it. Nevertheless, Li delights in the €œcreativity, serendipity and perseverance€� of big drug discoveries—lessons he hopes may prompt a renaissance in the industry. (Dec.)

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199737681
• ISBN 13: 9780199737680
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240