{"id":29092,"date":"2012-05-17T16:08:35","date_gmt":"2012-05-17T20:08:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=news&#038;p=29092"},"modified":"2012-05-17T16:08:35","modified_gmt":"2012-05-17T20:08:35","slug":"fda-approves-generic-clopidogrel-as-plavix-loses-patent-protection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2012\/05\/17\/fda-approves-generic-clopidogrel-as-plavix-loses-patent-protection\/","title":{"rendered":"FDA Approves Generic Clopidogrel as Plavix Loses Patent Protection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For the second time in the past 6 months, a cardiology mainstay drug has lost patent protection and gone generic.\u00a0Today, the FDA announced that it had approved several generic versions of clopidogrel (Plavix), the antiplatelet drug that for many years was the second best-selling drug in the world.\u00a0<a title=\"Generic Atorvastatin Hits the Market\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/news\/generic-atorvastatin-hits-the-market\/\">Last November,<\/a> the best-selling drug of all time, Lipitor (atorvastatin), another cardiology mainstay, went off patent, though it wasn&#8217;t until <a title=\"Atorvastatin Lifts Ranbaxy While Pfizer Abandons Its Lipitor Marketing Efforts\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/news\/atorvastatin-lifts-ranbaxy-while-pfizer-abandons-its-lipitor-marketing-efforts\/\">earlier this month<\/a> that multiple generics became available.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fda.gov\/NewsEvents\/Newsroom\/PressAnnouncements\/ucm304489.htm?utm_source=twitterfeed&amp;utm_medium=twitter\">The FDA said<\/a> that it had approved 300-mg formulations of clopidogrel from Gate Pharmaceuticals, Mylan Pharmaceuticals, and Teva Pharmaceuticals and 75-mg formulations from\u00a0Apotex Corporation, Aurobindo Pharma, Mylan Pharmaceuticals, Roxane Laboratories, Sun Pharma, Teva Pharmaceuticals, and Torrent Pharmaceuticals.<\/p>\n<p>In recent years, the FDA approved two newer antiplatelet drugs that had been designed to take over the central role of Plavix in treating acute coronary syndromes. However, these drugs &#8211; prasugrel (Effient) and ticagrelor (Brilinta) &#8211; have been struggling in the marketplace and at this point appear very unlikely to command a significant share of the market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the second time in the past 6 months, a cardiology mainstay drug has lost patent protection and gone generic.\u00a0Today, the FDA announced that it had approved several generic versions of clopidogrel (Plavix), the antiplatelet drug that for many years was the second best-selling drug in the world.\u00a0Last November, the best-selling drug of all time, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,9],"tags":[1184,255,334,1280,223,1279,335,240],"class_list":["post-29092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-interventional-cardiology","tag-antiplatelets","tag-brilinta","tag-clopidogrel","tag-effient","tag-generics","tag-plavix","tag-prasugrel","tag-ticagrelor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29092\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}