Medication - Blockbuster Drug

Blockbuster Drug

A blockbuster drug is a drug generating more than $1 billion of revenue for its owner each year. Cimetidine was the first drug ever to reach more than $1 billion a year in sales, thus making it the first blockbuster drug.

A report from URCH Publishing estimated that about one third of the pharma market by value is accounted for by blockbusters. About 125 products are blockbusters. The top seller currently is Lipitor, a cholesterol-lowering medication marketed by Pfizer with sales of $12.5 billion. In 2009 there were a total of seven new blockbuster drugs, with combined sales of $9.8 billion. Beyond this purely arbitrary financial consideration,

"In the pharmaceutical industry, a blockbuster drug is one that achieves acceptance by prescribing physicians as a therapeutic standard for, most commonly, a highly prevalent chronic (rather than acute) condition. Patients often take the medicines for long periods."

The birth control pill Enovid was the first modern drug taken by those not ill for a highly prevalent chronic condition. The focus on highly profitable drugs for chronic conditions and resulting de-emphasis of one-time acute treatment drugs has led to occasional shortages of antibiotics or vaccines, such as the influenza vaccine shortage in the United States.