Word: merck
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...giant white banner in Merck's campus-like Rahway headquarters reminds visitors that they have arrived at AMERICA'S MOST ADMIRED COMPANY, an accolade given the firm by a FORTUNE magazine survey in January. But Vagelos finds such praise unsettling. Says he: "You'll die if you sit on your laurels...
...ranks of generic-drug producers who do little or no research and sell copies of older drugs at deep discounts. Their share of the $28.3 billion-a-year U.S. market for prescription drugs is likely to double by 1990, from $1 billion in 1987. Name-brand drugmakers like Merck must produce or perish...
...Merck's drugs speak for themselves. An astounding 13 each rang up more than $100 million in 1987 sales, well ahead of Britain's Glaxo Holdings, which has five products in that rarefied range. Among Merck's best sellers are Vasotec, a blood pressure-lowering drug; the antibiotics Primaxin and Noroxin; Pepcid, used to treat peptic ulcers; the anti-inflammatories Clinoril and Indocin; an antiglaucoma agent named Timoptic; and the hepatitis fighter Recombivax HB, the first genetically engineered vaccine licensed for human...
Perhaps the most wondrous of Merck's wonder drugs is its newest, a substance called lovastatin that lowers cholesterol levels in the body by up to 40% and is marketed under the brand name Mevacor. Its development illustrates how Merck achieves breakthroughs via a combination of dogged lab work, close cooperation with FDA officials and a painstaking preoccupation with the safety of potential patients...
Mevacor was no overnight phenomenon. In 1956 a team of Merck scientists discovered melavonic acid, a crucial chemical in the series of reactions that produce cholesterol. It was not until 1979, four years after Vagelos left his teaching post at Washington University in St. Louis to join Merck Labs as a high-ranking executive, that the company used new lab techniques he had suggested to build on that 23-year-old discovery and isolate lovastatin, which could inhibit the production of melavonic acid and block the buildup of cholesterol. Merck spent eight years assessing lovastatin's safety. By November...