Discovery of Lipitor

Parke-Davis was not the first drug company to put a statin on the market (Merck was), but it was the one to do it the best, with Lipitor (atorva statin). When Parke-Davis Pharmaceuticals in Ann Arbor, Michigan, began to look for its own statin in 1982, it was late in the game. Parke-Davis’s Lipitor was discovered in the mid- to late 1980s and brought to market in 1997. Already ahead of it were four statins: Merck’s Mevacor was released in September 1987 and Zocor in December 1991, Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Pravachol in October 1991, and Sandoz’s Lescol in March 1994. Despite the competition, by 2006 Lipitor had become the best-selling drug in history, with one-year sales totaling $12.9 billion, more than the net worth of the 10th biggest drug company in the world. Although the drug firm Parke-Davis had in recent times been relegated to history books, half a century ago, Parke, Davis and Company once enjoyed the status of the largest pharmaceutical manufacturer in the world. In 1866, 38-year-old Hervey C. Parke, a businessman, and Samuel P. Duffield, a chemist and physician, founded Duffield, Parke & Company— Manufacturing Chemists in Detroit, Michigan. Duffield originally studied under the father of organic chemistry, Justus von Liebig, at the University of Giessen in Germany. He continued to pursue his academic interests even after the founding of the company and published several articles in the American Journal of Pharmacy. In 1867, 22-year-old George S. Davis joined the company as the firm’s first salesman. Four years later, Parke and Davis bought out Duffield’s shares of the company. In November 1871, Parke, Davis & Company was born, with Parke as the president and Davis as the general manager. The company’s inventory was typical of the time: aconite, belladonna, ergot, spirit of ammonia, arsenic, and ether. Davis, a Napoleonic, small-statured man, was clearly responsible for building the company’s sales and its enterprise in many directions. He pioneered product promotion by publishing books and magazines, a practice later followed by many other companies. When vaccines were first invented in Europe, Parke-Davis was one of the first pharmaceutical companies to move into this new field.