| Type | Public |
|---|---|
| Traded as | NYSE: PFE Dow Jones Component S&P 500 Component |
| Industry | Pharmaceutical |
| Founded | 1849 |
| Headquarters | New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Key people | Ian Read (President & CEO) |
| Products | List of Pfizer products |
| Revenue | US$ 67.809 billion (2010)[1] |
| Operating income | US$ 9.422 billion (2010)[1] |
| Net income | US$ 8.257 billion (2010)[1] |
| Total assets | US$ 195.014 billion (2010)[1] |
| Total equity | US$ 88.265 billion (2010)[1] |
| Employees | 110,600 (2010)[1] |
| Subsidiaries | Agouron Pharmaceuticals, G. D. Searle & Company, Greenstone, Parke-Davis, Pharmacia, Upjohn, Warner Lambert, Wyeth |
| Website | Pfizer.com |
Pfizer, Inc. (NYSE: PFE) (English pronunciation: /ˈfaɪzər/) is an American multinational pharmaceutical corporation. The company is headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, New York City[2], with its research headquarters in Groton, Connecticut, United States. Pfizer produces Lipitor (atorvastatin, used to lower blood cholesterol); the neuropathic pain/fibromyalgia drug Lyrica (pregabalin); the oral antifungal medication Diflucan (fluconazole), the antibiotic Zithromax (azithromycin), Viagra (sildenafil) for erectile dysfunction, and the anti-inflammatory Celebrex (celecoxib) (also known as Celebra in some countries outside the USA and Canada, mainly in South America).
Pfizer's shares were made a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average on April 8, 2004.[3]
Pfizer pleaded guilty in 2009 to the largest health care fraud in U.S. history and received the largest criminal penalty ever levied for illegal marketing of four of its drugs: Bextra, Geodon, Zyvox, and Lyrica. Called a repeat offender, this was Pfizer's fourth such settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice in the previous ten years.[4][5]
On January 26, 2009, Pfizer agreed to buy pharmaceutical giant Wyeth for US$68 billion, a deal financed with cash, shares and loans.[6] The deal was completed on October 15, 2009.[7]
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Pfizer is named after German-American cousins Charles Pfizer and Charles Erhardt (originally from Ludwigsburg, Germany) who launched a fine chemicals business, Charles Pfizer and Company, from a building at the intersection of Harrison Avenue and Bartlett Street[8] in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in 1849. There, they produced an antiparasitic called santonin. This was an immediate success, although it was the production of citric acid that really kick-started Pfizer's growth in the 1880s. Pfizer continued to buy property to expand its lab and factory on the block bounded by Bartlett Street; Harrison Avenue; Gerry Street; and Flushing Avenue. That facility was used by Pfizer until 2005, when Pfizer closed its original plant along with several others. Pfizer established its original administrative headquarters at 81 Maiden Lane in Manhattan.[8] By 1906, sales totaled nearly $3 million.
World War I caused a shortage of calcium citrate that Pfizer imported from Italy for the manufacture of citric acid, and the company began a search for an alternative supply. Pfizer chemists learned of a fungus that ferments sugar to citric acid and were able to commercialize production of citric acid from this source in 1919. As a result Pfizer developed expertise in fermentation technology. These skills were applied to the mass production of penicillin during World War II, in response to a need from the U.S. government. The antibiotic was needed to treat injured Allied soldiers. In fact, most of the penicillin that went ashore with the troops on D-Day was made by Pfizer.
Following the success of penicillin production in the 1940s, penicillin became very inexpensive and Pfizer made very little profit for its efforts. As a result, in the late 1940s Pfizer decided to search for new antibiotics with greater profit potential. The discovery and commercialization of Terramycin (oxytetracycline) by Pfizer in 1950 moved the company on the path of change from a manufacturer of fine chemicals to a research-based pharmaceutical company. To augment its research in fermentation technology, Pfizer began a program to discover drugs through chemical synthesis. Pfizer also established an animal health division in 1959 with an 700-acre (2.8 km2) farm and research facility in Terre Haute, Indiana.
By the 1950s, Pfizer was established in Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, Iran, Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, Turkey and the United Kingdom. In 1960, the Company moved its medical research laboratory operations to a new facility in Groton, Connecticut. In 1980 Pfizer launched Feldene (piroxicam), a prescription anti-inflammatory medication that became Pfizer's first product to reach a total of a billion United States dollars in sales.
During the 1980s and 1990s Pfizer underwent a period of growth sustained by the discovery and marketing of Zoloft, Lipitor, Norvasc, Zithromax, Aricept, Diflucan, and Viagra. Pfizer has recently grown by mergers, including those with Warner–Lambert (2000), with Pharmacia (2003), and with Wyeth (2009).
A July 2010 article in BusinessWeek reported that Pfizer was seeing more success in its battle against makers of counterfeit prescription drugs by pursuing civil lawsuits rather than criminal prosecution. Pfizer has hired customs and narcotics experts from all over the globe to track down fakes and assemble evidence that can be used to pursue civil suits for trademark infringement. Since 2007, Pfizer has spent $3.3 million on investigations and legal fees and recovered about $5.1 million, with another $5 million tied up in ongoing cases.[9]
In February 2011 it was announced that it was to close its research and development facility in Kent, which employs 2,400 people.[10]
On April 2011 Pfizer Inc has agreed to sell their world's largest maker of hard capsules Capsugel unit for about $2.38 billion to private equity firm KKR & Co. The cash will be used for a part of share buyback about $5 billion planned for 2011.[11]
Current members of the board of directors of Pfizer are: Michael S. Brown, M. Anthony Burns, Robert Burt, Don Cornwell, William H. Gray, Frances D. Fergusson, Constance Horner, William R. Howell, Stanley Ikenberry, Ian Read (chairman), George Lorch, John P. Mascotte, Dana Mead, Ruth J. Simmons, and William Steere.
Pfizer has four divisions: Human Health ($44.28B in 2005 sales), Consumer Healthcare ($3.87B in 2005 sales), Animal Health ($2.2B in 2005 sales), and Corporate Groups (which includes legal, finance, and HR). On June 26, 2006, Pfizer announced that it would sell its Consumer Healthcare unit (manufacturer of Listerine, Nicorette, Visine, Sudafed and Neosporin) to Johnson & Johnson for $16.6 billion.[13][14][15]
Warner–Lambert was founded as a drug store in 1856 in Philadelphia by William R. Warner. Inventing a tablet-coating process gained Warner a place in the Smithsonian Institution. Parke–Davis was founded in Detroit in 1866, by Hervey Parke and George Davis. Warner–Lambert took over Parke–Davis in 1976, and acquired Wilkinson Sword in 1993 and Agouron in 1999. In 2000 Pfizer took over Warner–Lambert.[16]
Searle was founded in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1888. The founder was Gideon Daniel Searle. In 1908, the company was incorporated in Chicago. In 1941, the company established headquarters in Skokie, Illinois. It was acquired by the Monsanto Company, headquartered in St. Louis, in 1985.
The Upjohn Company was a pharmaceutical manufacturing firm founded in 1886 in Kalamazoo, Michigan by Dr. William E. Upjohn, an 1875 graduate of the University of Michigan medical school. The company was originally formed to make friable pills, which were specifically designed to be easily digested.
In 1995, Upjohn merged with Pharmacia, to form Pharmacia & Upjohn. Pharmacia was created in April 2000 through the merger of Pharmacia & Upjohn with the Monsanto Company and its G.D. Searle unit. The merged company was based in Peapack, New Jersey. The agricultural division was spun off from Pharmacia, as Monsanto, in preparation for the close of the acquisition by Pfizer.[17]
In 2002, Pfizer merged with Pharmacia. The merger was again driven in part by the desire to acquire full rights to a product, this time Celebrex (celecoxib), the COX-2 selective inhibitor previously jointly marketed by Searle (acquired by Pharmacia) and Pfizer. In the ensuing years, Pfizer commenced with a massive restructuring resulting in numerous site closures and loss of jobs including: Terre Haute, IN; Holland, MI; Groton, CT; Brooklyn, NY; Sandwich, UK and Puerto Rico.
In 2008, Pfizer announced 275 job cuts at the Kalamazoo manufacturing facility. Kalamazoo was previously the world headquarters for the Upjohn Company.[18]
SUGEN was a company focused on protein kinase inhibitors, founded in 1991 in Redwood City, California and acquired by Pharmacia in 1999. The company pioneered the use of ATP-mimetic small molecules to block signal transduction. After the Pfizer merger, the SUGEN site was shut down in 2003, with the loss of over 300 jobs, and the transfer of several programs to Pfizer. These included sunitinib (Sutent), which was approved for human use by the FDA in January 2006, passed $1 bn in annual revenues for Pfizer in 2010.[19] A related compound SU11654 (Toceranib) was also approved for canine tumors, and the ALK inhibitor Crizotinib also grew out of a SUGEN program[20]
On January 26, 2009, after more than a year of talks between the two companies, Pfizer agreed to buy pharmaceuticals rival Wyeth for a combined US$68 billion in cash, shares and loans, including some US$22.5 billion lent by five major Wall Street banks. The deal would cement Pfizer's place as the largest pharmaceutical company in the world, with the merged company generating over US$20 billion in cash each year, and represents the largest corporate merger since AT&T and BellSouth's US$70 billion deal in March 2006.[21] Wyeth's management team is expected to depart following the merger. The combined company could save US$4 billion annually through the streamlining of operations; however, as part of the deal, both companies must repatriate billions of dollars in revenue from foreign sources to the United States, which will result in higher tax costs. The acquisition was completed on October 15, 2009 making Wyeth a wholly owned subsidiary of Pfizer.[7]
The merger received a vast array of criticism. Harvard Business School’s Gary Pisano told The Wall Street Journal:
The record of big mergers and acquisitions in Big Pharma has just not been good. There’s just been an enormous amount of shareholder wealth destroyed.[22]
The Warner–Lambert and Pharmacia mergers do not appear to have achieved gains for shareholders so it is unclear who will benefit from the Wyeth–Pfizer merger to many critics.[23]
In October 2010, Pfizer agreed to buy King Pharmaceuticals for $3.6 billion in cash or $14.25 per share: an approximately 40% premium over King’s closing share price 11th october 2010.[24]
Development of torcetrapib, a drug that increases production of HDL, or "good cholesterol", which reduces LDL thought to be correlated to heart disease, was cancelled in December 2006. During a Phase III clinical trial involving 15,000 patients there were more deaths than expected in the group that took the medicine, and a 60% increase in deaths was seen among patients taking torcetrapib plus Lipitor versus Lipitor alone. There was no suggestion these results called into question the safety of Lipitor. Pfizer lost nearly $1 billion invested developing the failed drug, and the market value of the company plummeted in the aftermath.[25][26][27]
Pfizer had the greatest number of blockbuster products in 2009 with 14, which includes five inherited through the acquisition of Wyeth .[28]
The following is a list of key prescription pharmaceutical products. The names shown are all registered trademarks of Pfizer Inc.[29]
In addition to marketing branded pharmaceutials Pfizer is involved in the manufacture and sale of generics. In the US it does this through its Greenstone subsidiary which it acquired as part of the acquisition of Pharmacia.[30] Pfizer also has a licensing deal in place with Aurobindo which grants the former access to a variety of oral solid generic products.[31]
The following is a partial list of Animal Health brands manufactured by Pfizer:
Pfizer is party to a number of suits stemming from its pharmaceutical products as well as practices of various companies it has acquired or merged with.[4][5][32]
Pfizer's interest in obtaining property in New London, Connecticut, for expanded facilities led to the Kelo v. New London case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court's 2005 decision in Kelo v. City of New London handed local governments the right to seize private property for economic development,[33] i. e., offices, a hotel to enhance Pfizer Inc.'s nearby corporate facility. However, following the completion of the aforementioned Wyeth merger, Pfizer announced it will close its research and development headquarters in New London, Connecticut, moving employees to nearby Groton.
Pfizer acquired Quigley in 1968, and the division sold asbestos-containing insulation products until the early 1970s.[34] Asbestos victims and Pfizer have been negotiating a settlement deal which calls for Pfizer to pay $430 million to 80 percent of existing plaintiffs. It will also place an additional $535 million into an asbestos settlement trust that will compensate future plaintiffs as well as the remaining 20 percent of current plaintiffs with claims against Pfizer and Quigley. The compensation deal is worth $965 million all up. Of that $535 million, $405 million is in a 40-year note from Pfizer, while $100 million will come from insurance policies.
Pfizer purchased Shiley in 1979 at the onset of its Convexo-Concave valve ordeal, involving the Bjork–Shiley heart valve. Approximately 500 people died when defective valves failed and, in 1994, the United States ruled against Pfizer for ~$200 million.[35][36]
Pfizer is a leading member of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, a Washington D.C.-based coalition of over 400 major companies and NGOs that advocates for a larger International Affairs Budget, which funds American diplomatic, humanitarian, and development efforts abroad.[37]
Pfizer is one of the single largest lobbying interests in United States politics. For example in the first 9 months of 2009 Pfizer spent over $16.3 million on lobbying US congressional lawmakers, making them the sixth largest lobbying interest in the US (following Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), which ranked fourth but also represents many of their interests). A spokeswoman for Pfizer said the company “wanted to make sure our voice is heard in this conversation” in regards to the companies expenditure of $25 million in 2010 to lobby health care reform.[38]
Pfizer's primary interests are opposition of Congressional efforts to attach a prescription drug benefit to Medicare and opposition to generic drugs entering US markets.[39] Pfizer also purportedly proposed a ban on all lawsuits against manufacturers of body implant parts which was proposed in the United States Congress as part of tort reform legislation.[40]
According to U.S. State Department cables released by the whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks, Pfizer "lobbied against New Zealand getting a free trade agreement with the United States because it objected to New Zealand’s restrictive drug buying rules and tried to get rid of New Zealand’s former health minister, Helen Clark, in 1990.[41][42]
Access to pharmaceutical industry documents has revealed marketing strategies used to promote Neurontin for off-label use.[43] In 1993, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved gabapentin (Neurontin, Pfizer) only for treatment of seizures. Warner–Lambert, which merged with Pfizer in 2000, used activities not usually associated with sales promotion, including continuing medical education and research, sponsored articles about the drug for the medical literature, and alleged suppression of unfavorable study results, to promote gabapentin. Within 5 years the drug was being widely used for the off-label treatment of pain and psychiatric conditions. In 2004, Warner–Lambert admitted to charges that it violated FDA regulations by promoting the drug for pain, psychiatric conditions, migraine, and other unapproved uses, and paid $430 million to resolve criminal and civil health care liability charges.[44][45] Today it is a mainstay drug for migraines, even though it was not approved for such use in 2004.[46]
In September 2009, the United States Department of Justice announced that Pfizer had agreed to pay $2.3 billion to settle civil and criminal allegations that it had illegally marketed four drugs: Bextra, Geodon, Zyvox, and Lyrica "with the intent to defraud or mislead" by promoting the drugs for non-approved uses; this marks Pfizer's fourth such settlement in a decade.[4][5][32] Pharmacia & Upjohn Company, Inc., a Pfizer subsidiary, agreed to plead guilty to mis-branded promotion of Bextra, a felony violation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. The criminal fine accounts for $1.3 billion of the settlement, and is the largest criminal penalty ever imposed in American history.[47] Pfizer has entered an extensive corporate integrity agreement (CIA) with the Office of Inspector General and will be required to make substantial structural reforms within the company, and maintain the Pfizer website (www.pfizer.com/pmc) to track the company's post marketing commitments. Pfizer must also put a searchable database of all payments to physicians the company has made on the Pfizer website by March 31, 2010.[48] In addition, two former employees were separately indicted and sentenced for their role in marketing of Bextra. A former District Sales manager was found guilty of obstruction of justice for destroying documents pertinent to the investigation, and a Regional Sales Manager pled guilty to the distribution of a mis-branded product.[49][50]
The case is the largest civil settlement against a pharmaceutical company as well.[51] Pfizer paid a $1 billion civil fine to settle allegations it had illegally promoted the drugs for uses that were not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and caused false claims to be submitted to Federal and State programs including but not limited to Medicare and Medicaid. Under the False Claims Act, damages can be assessed for violations of the federal Anti-Kickback statute, 42 U.S.C. § 1320a–7b(b)[52] and the off-label marketing provision within the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act ("FDCA"), 21 U.S.C. §§301-97.[53] Six whistle-blowers will receive $102 million for their participation in the civil investigation, and John Kopchinski, a former sales representative, will receive $51.5 million for his allegations involving the marketing of Bextra.[54]
CNN reported that Pharmacia & Upjohn, not Pfizer itself, pleaded guilty because prosecutors thought Pfizer was "too big to nail." Companies convicted of major health care fraud are automatically barred from billing Medicare and Medicaid for their products. Prosecutors feared that Pfizer would collapse if it pleaded guilty, and felt that the risk of harm to patients was too great. A CNN investigation revealed that Pharmacia & Upjohn Company is little more than a shell corporation Pfizer uses to plead guilty; it was first created in 2007 as the defendant in a kickback case.[55]
In 1996, an outbreak of measles, cholera, and bacterial meningitis occurred in Nigeria. Pfizer representatives traveled to Kano, Nigeria to administer an experimental antibiotic, trovafloxacin, to approximately 200 children. Local Kano officials report that more than 50 children died in the experiment, while many others developed mental and physical deformities.[56] In 2001, families of the children, as well as the governments of Kano and Nigeria, filed lawsuits regarding the treatment.[57] Representing the government is Babatunde Irukera. According to news reports, "[r]esearchers did not obtain signed consent forms, and medical personnel said Pfizer did not tell parents their children were getting the experimental drug."[58] The lawsuits also accuse Pfizer of using the outbreak to perform unapproved human testing, as well as allegedly under-dosing a control group being treated with traditional antibiotics in order to skew the results of the trial in favor of Trovan. Pfizer denied these claims, and subsequently produced an approval letter for testing from the Nigerian Ethics Committee. The Nigerian government insisted that it was a fake and a panel of Nigerian medical experts agreed that the letter had been concocted and backdated by the company's lead researcher in Kano. They went on to conclude that Pfizer never obtained authorization from the Nigerian government to give the unproven drug to children and infants.[59]
In 2007, Pfizer published a Statement of Defense letter.[60] The letter makes several claims, including that Pfizer donated 18 million in Nigerian Naira (NGN) (about $216,000 in 1996 US dollars (USD)) ,[61] that the drug's oral form was presented as safer and easier to administer, that the administration of Trovan saved lives, and that no unusual side effects, unrelated to meningitis, were observed after 4 weeks.
A more likely reason for Pfizer's insistence on the oral form is the result of testing trovafloxacin intravenously in 1995, which found that the drug precipitated in saline, making it ineffective in patients receiving IV fluids. This is inferred from an FDA Warning Letter[62] to ex-CEO William C. Steere, regarding Trovan's compatibility with saline etc., which was omitted from Trovan's labeling until January 1999, shortly after Pfizer received the letter.
In June 1999, the FDA released a public health statement warning against the use of Trovan except in life-or-death situations, due to high risk of liver failure. In some cases, liver damage occurred after only two days of treatment.[63]
In June 2010 the US Supreme Court rejected Pfizer's appeal against a ruling allowing lawsuits by the Nigerian families to proceed.[64]
In December 2010 WikiLeaks released US diplomatic cables, which indicate that Pfizer had "used dirty tricks to avoid clinical trial payout". The company had hired investigators to find evidence of corruption against the Nigerian attorney general to persuade him to drop legal action.[65] Washington Post reporter Joe Stephens, who helped break the story in 2000, called these actions "dangerously close to blackmail."[58] In response the company has released a press statement describing the allegations as "preposterous" and stating that they acted in good faith.[66]
A scientist claims she was infected by a genetically modified virus while working for Pfizer. In her federal lawsuit she says she has been intermittently paralyzed by the Pfizer-designed virus. "McClain, of Deep River, suspects she was inadvertently exposed, through work by a former Pfizer colleague in 2002 or 2003, to an engineered form of the lentivirus, a virus similar to the one that can lead to acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS."[67]
Health insurance company Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) filed a lawsuit against Pfizer for reportedly illegally marketing their drugs Bextra, Geodon and Lyrica. BCBS is reporting that Pfizer used "kickbacks" and wrongly persuaded doctors to prescribe the drugs.[68][69] FiercePharma reported that "According to the suit, the drugmaker not only handed out those "misleading" materials on off-label uses, but sent doctors on Caribbean junkets and paid them $2,000 honoraria in return for their listening to lectures about Bextra. More than 5,000 healthcare professionals were entertained at meetings in Bahamas, Virgin Islands and across the U.S., the suit alleges."[70] Pfizer has had similar cases brought against it which it has settled with the US federal government and with more than 40 US states.[71] Pfizer denies the allegations.
A "whistleblower suit" was filed in 2005 against Wyeth, which was acquired by Pfizer, alleging that the company illegally marketed their drug Rapamune. Wyeth is targeted in the suit for off-label marketing, targeting specific doctors and medical facilities to increased sales of Rapamune, trying to get current transplant patients to change from their current transplant drugs to Rapamune and for specifically targeting African-Americans. According to the whistleblowers, Wyeth also provided doctors and hospitals with kickbacks to prescribe the drug in the form of grants, donations and other money.[72][73] A US House of Representatives committee, led by Rep. Edolphus Towns is currently investigating Pfizer for these abuses.[74][75]
Pfizer's human research and development organization is headquartered in New London, CT while their animal health research and development organization is headquartered in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The company has R&D labs in the following locations: Groton, Connecticut; La Jolla, California; South San Francisco, California; Cambridge, Massachusetts; Kalamazoo, Michigan; St. Louis, Missouri. In La Jolla, Pfizer has 1,000 people with plans to create cancer drugs, a departure from the company's cardiovascular specialties.[76] The Sandwich research center in England is currently closing.
Spending $8.1 billion in research & development (R&D) in 2007, Pfizer has the industry's largest pharmaceutical R&D organization: Pfizer Global Research and Development.[77]
In 2007, Pfizer announced plans to close or sell on the Loughbeg API facility, located at Loughbeg, Ringaskiddy Co.Cork Ireland by mid to end of 2008
In 2007, Pfizer announced plans to completely close the Ann Arbor, Nagoya and Amboise Research facilities by the end of 2008, eliminating 2,160 jobs and idling the $300-million dollar Michigan facility, which had seen millions of dollars of expansion in recent years.[78]
On June 18, 2007 Pfizer announced it will move the Sandwich, England Animal Health Research (VMRD) division to Kalamazoo, Michigan.[79]
On February 1, 2011 Pfizer announced that it was to pull out of its UK Research and Development centre at Sandwich, Kent, with the loss of 2,400 jobs.[80]
On September 1, 2011 Pfizer announced that it has agreed to a 10-year lease of more than 180,000 square feet of research space from MIT in a building to be constructed at 610 Main Street South, just north of the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US. The space will house Pfizer’s Cardiovascular, Metabolic and Endocrine Disease Research Unit and its Neuroscience Research Unit — and Pfizer anticipates moving into the space once it is completed in late 2013. [81]
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According to the EPA, Pfizer is among the top ten companies in America with the most numerous emissions sources.[82] A landfill and two wastewater lagoons in Ledyard, CT near the Pfizer plant in Groton, Connecticut, are a source of groundwater pollution in the area. According to the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection (CT DEP), the Pfizer site is active under the CT DEP Site Remediation program.[83] In June 2002, a chemical explosion at the Groton plant injured seven people and caused the evacuation of over 100 homes in the surrounding area.[84]
Pfizer has provided funding to the Competitive Enterprise Institute[84]
Pfizer received a 100% rating on the Corporate Equality Index released by the Human Rights Campaign starting in 2004, the third year of the report. In 2007, Pfizer's Canadian division was named one of Canada's Top 100 Employers, as published in Maclean's magazine, the only research-based pharmaceutical company to receive this honor.[85] In 2008, there was controversy, including inquiries from members of Congress, around Pfizer's practice of replacing US workers with H-1b guest workers[86]
Pfizer has been involved in controversies over the medicine Diflucan (generic name fluconazole). In 1998, a campaign by Thai public health groups led to the elimination of the Pfizer monopoly on selling fluconazole in Thailand, and the price of the antifungal drug decreased from 200 baht to 6.5 baht in nine months, vastly expanding access to the medicine for AIDS patients. Faced with pressure for compulsory licenses to the Pfizer patent on this drug, Pfizer later established a program for limited access to the medicine in Africa.[87]
"In the United States, 46 percent of all new HIV/AIDS cases occur in the South. From 2003 to 2006 the Pfizer Foundation has funded 23 innovative HIV/AIDS prevention programs and strengthened the capacity of community-based organizations to reach and serve their communities."[88] Since 2003, Pfizer has committed a $3 million grant toward supporting the Southern HIV/AIDS Prevention Initiative.
However, there were criticisms of the way Pfizer was testing its AIDS drug. "The European AIDS Treatment Group (EATG), collection of activists from 31 European Countries,[89] said the design of the trial for Pfizer's CCR5 inhibitor maraviroc (previously known as UK-427,857) is putting people with HIV infection at unnecessary risk of developing AIDS."[90]
On June 20, 2007, Pfizer received an approvable letter for maraviroc from the FDA advisory board. The letter was a product of expedited review of the novel HIV compound.[91]
In 2001, Pfizer asked the U.S. government to pressure the Brazilian government against issuing compulsory licenses for the patents on the AIDS drug nelfinavir.
In November 2009 Pfizer formed a joint venture with GlaxoSmithKline to create ViiV Healthcare. Viiv Healthcare received all of Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline's HIV assets.[92]
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