By Brendan Borrell

Facing dwindling product pipelines and looming patent cliffs, nearly all of the world’s major drugmakers have recently overhauled their research and development activities. Brendan Borrell asks what difference these efforts have made.

In November 2004, Sanofi-Aventis thought it had the next blockbuster weight-loss drug. At the time, several of the French drugmaker’sbiggest hits, including the allergy pill Allegra and the insomnia medication Ambien, were

about to lose patent protection, and the pharmaceutical company—the world’s third largest at the time—needed a winner. At the American Heart Association’s annual meeting in New Orleans that year, researchers from New York’s Columbia University Medical Center presented phase 3 clinical trial results on Sanofi’s Acomplia (rimonabant), a drug that shuts off cannabinoid receptors in the brain to suppress appetite. The two-year trial involving more than 3,000 obese and overweight people across North America revealed that subjects taking Acomplia shed around 20 pounds on average and showed improvements in their levels of circulating triglycerides and ‘good’ cholesterol. The American Heart Association named it one of the top ten advances of the year. Soon after, Sanofi predicted annual sales of $3 billion—about one tenth of the company’s

global income.

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Image: Andrei Jackamets