Lipitor: The blockbuster that almost wasn’t

The loss of patent on Lipitor looks set to cost up to 180 jobs at two Pfizer plants in Cork. Linda Johnson examines the success of the lucrative cholesterol lowering drug

LIPITOR, the best-selling drug in the history of pharmaceuticals, is the blockbuster that almost wasn’t.

When it was in development, the cholesterol-lowering medicine was viewed as such an also-ran it almost didn’t make it into patient testing.