The period of pharmaceutical development known as the “me-too drug” or “follow-on drug” era was not the most auspicious for the sector. One pharmaceutical company’s small molecule drug was closely followed to market by a very similar product from another company. Medicinal chemists would make the slightest change that effectively left safety and efficacy as close to the initial drug as possible while skirting around the originator’s patents. The histamine H2 receptor antagonists Zantac (ranitidine) and Tagamet (cimetidine) – from the component companies of GSK plc* – for the treatment of gastric ulcers, and the first tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) Tarceva (erlotinib) from Roche Holding AG and Iressa (gefitinib) from AstraZeneca PLC for the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) were two examples of close chemical relations.
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The era of follow-on medicinal chemistry has largely been eliminated by more comprehensive patent protection. Nowadays, investors trade on the differences in safety and efficacy for similar molecules.
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