Pfizer

• Date founded: 1849
• Industry: Pharmaceutical
• Corporate Headquarters: New York, New York, United States
• Type: Public

Overview

Pfizer is a multi-billion-dollar American pharmaceutical company that produces vaccines, medicines, and a variety of healthcare products. The company was founded in the mid-nineteenth century by two German immigrants who wanted to market a sweet-tasting remedy for intestinal parasites. Propelled by the need for medicines during the Civil War (1861–1865), the company was able to expand and branch out into industrial chemicals such as those used to make soft drinks. In the mid-twentieth century, Pfizer became a publicly traded company and shifted its focus to antibiotics and medicine. Thanks to marketing such prescription drugs as Lipitor and Viagra, as well as over-the-counter medicines such as Centrum and Advil, Pfizer became one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. Entering the 2020s, it was one of the top one hundred corporations in the United States and one of the top pharmaceutical companies worldwide, with annual revenues of around $50 billion. Pfizer developed one of the vaccines to fight COVID-19 in late 2020, and its annual revenue skyrocketed to $100.33 billion in 2022. Its COVID antiviral medication, Paxlovid, was approved by the Federal Drug Administration the following year.

History

In 1849, chemist Charles Pfizer and his cousin, confectioner Charles Erhart, opened Charles Pfizer & Company, a chemical business in Brooklyn, New York. The first product produced by the two German-born Americans was a drug called santonin that was used to treat intestinal worms. Pfizer and Erhart used their expertise to give the drug a toffee flavor to make it easier to consume. During the Civil War, Pfizer provided the Union Army with painkillers, antiseptics, and other drugs. The increased business allowed the company to boost its product line and workforce, prompting a move to a bigger location in downtown Manhattan.

After the war, Pfizer became one of the nation’s leading producers of citric acid, a substance used in soft drinks such as Coca-Cola and Dr. Pepper. As demand for soft drinks soared, Pfizer’s business did as well, leading to the company opening new offices and a warehouse in Chicago. By the start of the twentieth century, Pfizer employed about two hundred people and was the largest chemical supplier in the United States.

In 1919, the company developed a fermentation process that allowed it to produce citric acid from molasses. A decade later, Scottish biologist Alexander Fleming discovered that a type of mold he found growing in a laboratory experiment could produce an antibiotic known as penicillin. Pfizer was among several companies that began work researching ways to develop penicillin into a usable antibiotic drug. The company’s fermentation technique gave Pfizer the advantage in the endeavor, allowing it to mass-produce penicillin for American troops during World War II (1939–1945).

During the 1940s, Pfizer began to concentrate its business on the growing market for antibiotics and medicines. The company went public in 1942, and in 1944, it opened the world’s first large-scale commercial production plant for penicillin. Building on its success producing penicillin, Pfizer developed the antibiotic Terramycin in 1950. It was the first proprietary drug sold under the Pfizer brand and its first drug promoted through the use of pharmaceutical sales representatives. Pfizer also expanded overseas in the early 1950s, opening offices and research and production facilities in nine new countries.

While Pfizer’s main focus was on its pharmaceutical brands, the company continued to diversify into other markets, such as industrial chemicals, agricultural products, and nutritional products. In the late twentieth century, Pfizer expanded its operation through several corporate acquisitions and reorganized its research and development division. During this time, the company was instrumental in developing a number of different medications to treat infections, diabetes, high blood pressure, depression, and other conditions.

During the 1990s, Pfizer was instrumental in developing two of the most successful pharmaceutical products in history. The pharmaceutical company Warner-Lambert had developed a highly successful cholesterol-reducing drug called Lipitor. In 1996, Warner-Lambert partnered with Pfizer to produce and market the drug, which was introduced to the public in 1997. Lipitor was an immediate success and eventually became the best-selling prescription medication in history. In 2000, Pfizer became the sole distributor of Lipitor when it bought Warner-Lambert. From 1996 to 2012, Lipitor generated more than $125 billion in sales for Pfizer.

The second breakthrough was discovered accidentally during tests on the high blood pressure medication sildenafil. Researchers found that one of the medication’s side effects cured erectile dysfunction, leading to the development of the drug Viagra. Viagra was first approved for sale in 1998 and went on to pull in about $2 billion in annual revenue for Pfizer by 2008. The company lost patent exclusivity on Lipitor and Viagra in the early twenty-first century, allowing competitors to cut into its market share, but Pfizer remained a global giant in the pharmaceutical industry. By 2018, Pfizer had merged with former rivals Pharmacia, Upjohn, Wyeth, and Hospira and, in 2019, merged its consumer healthcare division with British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline.

In 2018, Pfizer announced it would be reorganizing its business into three units. Its innovative medicines and established medicines units would include vaccines and prescription drugs. Its consumer healthcare unit would handle over-the-counter products such as the multivitamin Centrum brands, pain reliever Advil, the cold medicine Robitussin, and the lip balm ChapStick. The deal to merge the consumer health division with that of GlaxoSmithKline closed in August 2019. That same year Pfizer merged its Upjohn division, focusing on generic medicines, with Netherlands-based Mylan to form the company Viatris; that merger was approved by the US Federal Trade Commission in 2020.

In 2020 Pfizer was one of many pharmaceutical companies around the world to work on developing vaccines to combat coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), as the newly discovered viral disease reached pandemic level early that year. Pfizer's research was part of an unprecedented push to create and test vaccines much faster than the normal process, which can take years. Partnering with German company BioNTech, Pfizer found strong early results with mRNA vaccine candidates and had clinical trials prioritized by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In November, it was announced that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was almost 95 percent effective and had no known serious side effects. The following month, the United Kingdom became the first to authorize the vaccine on an emergency basis. Other countries followed suit throughout December 2020, including the United States. As the US rollout of COVID-19 vaccines increased into 2021, the Pfizer vaccine, which was marketed as Comirnaty, was initially the most widely administered. In 2023, Pfizer won FDA approval for its oral anti-COVID medication, Paxlovid.

Impact

Throughout its history, Pfizer has had widespread influence, both through the impact of its various products and its more general economic impact as a major company. It remains one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies based on revenues and has consistently ranked among other Fortune 500 businesses. According to Forbes magazine, Pfizer had a market value of $162.3 billion and ranked 436 on its Global 2000 list of largest public corporations in the world in 2024. By then, it employed about 88,000 employees across 80 countries and sold its products in about 200 countries.

Pfizer’s corporate headquarters remained in Manhattan, New York City. The company’s research and development headquarters was located in Groton, Connecticut, though it also had several other research facilities in locations in the United States, the United Kingdom, and India. Pfizer is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol PFE.

Bibliography

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“Discovery and Development of Penicillin: International Historic Chemical Landmark.” ACS, American Chemical Society, www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/flemingpenicillin.html. Accessed 9 Jan. 2025.

“Global Manufacturing, Supply & Distribution.” Pfizer, 2024, www.pfizer.com/products/how-drugs-are-made/global-supply. Accessed 9 Jan. 2025.

Murphy, Andrea, and Matt Schifrin. "The Global 2000: 2024." Forbes, 6 June 2024, www.forbes.com/lists/global2000/. Accessed 9 Jan. 2025.

Jörn, Axel. Pfizer and the Challenges of the Global Pharmaceutical Industry. Anchor Academic, 2016.

“Lipitor Becomes World’s Top-Selling Drug.” Crain’s New York Business, 27 Dec. 2011, www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20111228/HEALTH‗CARE/111229902/lipitor-becomes-world-s-top-selling-drug. Accessed 9 Jan. 2025.

“Pfizer (PFE).” Forbes, 8 Jan. 2025, www.forbes.com/companies/pfizer/. Accessed 9 Jan. 2025.

Stewart, Judith. "Paxlovid FDA Approval History." Drugs.com, 14 Mar. 2024, www.drugs.com/history/paxlovid.html. Accessed 9 Jan. 2025.