Pfizer Incorporated, the world’s largest drug maker, has said it would shift its focus in research to diseases with high potential for large profits such as cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. According to the pharmaceutical company’s spokeswoman Liz Power, the company intends to end new research on obesity and heart disease, but would continue with the research on drugs that are already in late stage human testing which are 31 of over 100 research programs. 

They would be leaving a field that includes the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor, which generates about $12 billion a year in revenue and blood pressure blockbuster Norvasc which pushed the company to the top of the pharmaceutical industry for more than a decade. Norvasc has gone generic last year and Lipitor is scheduled to follow suit in 2011. 

Research on more than 11 medications for clinical conditions such as anemia, osteoporosis, liver disease, muscle disease, obesity and peripheral artery disease would stop and the focus would shift to areas such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes, immune disorders and inflammation, cancer, pain and mental illness including schizophrenia. Experts feel these changes are standard in the pharmaceutical industry and needed to keep competition and revenue in check. 

Pfizer anticipates spending up to $7.5 billion on research and development this year, which is a huge budget for the industry. "Even though it is very large, it is finite," Power said. Power said the New York based company was looking at research in particular the expensive last stage human testing to areas where the existing treatments are not fulfilling the patient’s needs and also where there is a substantial commercial market with the company standing to gain scientific success.  

Analyst Steve Brozak of WBB Securities said, "They're basically looking at the largest-margin, largest-market indications." The company plans to bring units that would be responsible for their profit and loss back into business and there are anticipations of cuts in personnel and R&D spending which at $1.8 billion last year were the highest in the industry. 

Martin Mackay, Pfizer's head of research and development said, ”We still see the programs that we're stopping as having value." 

Barbara Ryan, pharmaceuticals analyst at Deutsche Bank said, "We have a large number of highly effective (cardiovascular) drugs, and it's very difficult to demonstrate a big improvement above and beyond what exists, and that's really what the FDA and payers demand."

In the semiannual update for investors Pfizer said it currently has 114 human studies of drugs in process and said that the number in final human testing has grown from 16 to 25 since its last update in February. 19 of these are in its high-priority areas and testing of 13 drugs, including four for rheumatoid arthritis, have been discontinued since February.