Iowa State University Alumni Association| online edition | fall 2006
Bruce Roth

 


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BRUCE ROTH: PFIZER PHARMACEUTICAL VICE PRESIDENT FOR CHEMISTRY
THE $12 BILLION MAN

The life of a typical pharmaceutical chemist is filled with failure. He toils in the lab, looking for a cure or treatment for a disease. He hypothesizes: What might work? There’s a lot of trial and error, akin to looking for a needle in a haystack. It’s complicated. But then perhaps something clicks. A patent is filed. The drug is tested on animals. Maybe it goes all the way to human clinical trials. By this time, the chemist is out of the loop, already working on a new treatment for another disease. He watches the clinical trials from a distance, hoping his drug will work, that it will have no major side effects.

He waits, watches, and hopes. The clock is ticking. The patent life is running out. In the end, he knows that most drugs never make it to the consumer market.

So the chemist, along with the rest of the research and development team, learns to live with failure.

Such was the life of Bruce Roth (Ph.D. ’81 organic chemistry), a scientist in the chemistry division of Pfizer Global Research and Development (formerly Parke-Davis Pharmaceutical Research). Until one day, when a drug he had invented became the pharmaceutical equivalent of a grand-slam home run. Or a hole in one. Or a Hollywood blockbuster. Or all of the above.

Roth’s invention – atorvastatin, better known as the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor – was the Queen Mother of all drug discoveries. At $12 billion in sales in 2005, Lipitor is the top-selling drug in history. It is the most-prescribed cholesterol-lowering therapy in the world, used by more than 45 million people. Nobel Laureate Michael S. Brown has said that Lipitor is on track to have greater benefit for more people than any other drug in the history of the industry in terms of lives improved and saved.

But in 1990, Roth hadn’t a clue that his molecular compound would one day have record-shattering results. He knew his compounds were getting closer to hitting the target, but based on animal trials, he figured Lipitor was about as good as the other drugs on the market. Nothing really distinguished it from the pack.

When he saw the first clinical data on Lipitor, that was
the first “WOW!” moment he experienced.

That was in 1990. He had originally begun working on the drug in 1982, and it finally reached the market in 1997, 15 full years later, which is a fairly typical length of time, Roth said.

And now, of course, Bruce Roth is a superstar among chemists. He is currently vice president for chemistry at Pfizer’s Global Research and Development facility in Ann Arbor, Mich. He received the 1997 Warner-Lambert Chairman’s Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award, the 1999 Inventor of the Year Award from the New York Intellectual Property Law Association, the 2003 American Chemical Society Award for Creative Invention, the 2003 Gustavus J. Esselen Award for chemistry in the public interest, and
Iowa State’s Distinguished Achievement Award in 2005.

“It’s humbling,” Roth says. “You get into this area because you want to contribute. You want to help people. Lipitor is the biggest drug in the history of the industry, but I guess I’d like to think more in terms of people who benefit from it. It’s just remarkable.”

Read on | Stephanie Burns: 'I think we can help'

About the Writer | Carole Gieseke is the editor of VISIONS magazine.