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From the Observer Innovations 100 - Drugs -----------------------
Drug innovators: Dr Nick Terret and Dr Ian Osterloh, Viagra =========================================================== Digg it
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The Observer, Sunday 31 March 2002 It must be a bit wearing for Dr Nick Terret. Nicole Kidman is regularly referred to as 'theatrical Viagra', Hugh Hefner as 'the patron saint of Viagra' and Patrick Vieira nicknamed 'Patrick Viagra'. The 'ever-ready sex pill' has caught our collective imagination in ways that the boffins at Pfizer hadn't anticipated. Terret was one of the four chemists who invented the active ingredient in Viagra and he admits to being staggered by the levels of media coverage. 'I hadn't thought there'd be much interest outside medical circles,' he says. He thinks the tendency to focus on the 'lighter' side of the story is a shame. 'It might mean people don't recognise that this is a quality drug that has highlighted and answered a real medical need. People didn't talk about erectile dysfunction in the past, because ways to treat it weren't particularly pleasant.' Still, he fondly remembers when his kids found out about his job: 'They were quite proud.'
Getting a new drug from laboratory to launch is a tricky and often frustrating business. One in 15,000 chemical compounds will last the journey and actually make it on to the market. Of those that get as far as being tested on human beings, one in 15 will survive. Which means many people in the pharmaceutical industry will work a lifetime without seeing any of their projects through to completion. Not unnaturally, Terret and his colleague Dr Ian Osterloh feels privileged to have worked on such a successful project. Osterloh was in charge of clinical development of the drug. Clinical development begins 'when a company thinks it's got a useful drug, but hasn't had it tested on humans. Once you have enough data you send off literally truck loads of paper to the regulatory authority.' Both men are a bit sniffy when it comes to discussing the drug's recreational use. 'It diminishes the real medical need' is all Terret will say, while Osterloh says it is 'a prescription drug that should only be used as prescribed'. Terret says he had a lot of fun working on it, though. 'I got to travel the world and give talks about it. So few people in the drug-discovery business are this successful.'
Oddly, despite its fame, Viagra isn't Pfizer's best-seller - it's cardiovascular drugs which really bring home the booty. Print thisPrintable version
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Close Drug innovators: Dr Nick Terret and Dr Ian Osterloh, Viagra ===========================================================
This article appeared in the Observer on Sunday 31 March 2002. It was published on guardian.co.uk at 02.01 BST on Sunday 31 March 2002. Latest from from the observer
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