Tuesday, the world’s largest drugmaker, Pfizer Incorporated, has announced it would be switching its focus from developing medication for heart disease to some more profitable areas.

The pharmaceuticals giant informed it would be closing out research on more than 11 medications for clinical conditions such as anemia, osteoporosis, liver disease, muscle disease, obesity and peripheral artery disease, in order to begin concentrating on five other therapeutic areas: Alzheimer’s, diabetes, immune disorders and inflammation, cancer, pain and mental illness including schizophrenia.

In a press release, the company stated that 31 of over 100 research programs had advanced to a superior stage in development over the previous six months and that they would be leaving a field that includes the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor and blood pressure blockbuster Norvasc that insured the company’s reign over the pharmaceutical industry for more than a decade.
With Norvasc gone generic last year and Lipitor scheduled to do the same in 2011, the industry now sees heart disease as a supersaturated area, where bringing to market a new drug that would actually make a big difference, therefore promptint high sales, seems almost impossible to accomplish.

The new direction is part of a plan to bring back into business units responsible for their own profits and losses. Cuts in personnel and a reduction in research and development spendings-which at a reported $8.1 billion last year were the highest in the industry-are expected in the near future.

 ”We still see the programs that we're stopping as having value," stated Martin Mackay, Pfizer's head of research and development.

Nevertheless, these are no longer considered as important and as profitable as oncology programs or ones concerning Alzheimer's disease, he added.