Many of the discoveries and innovations that drive the Pfizer pipeline to new potentials occur in the world-class research and development laboratories in Groton, Connecticut. Pfizer Groton has a long and proud history of drug discovery and development including Zoloft and Zithromax, and more recently, Xalkori and Xeljanz. Today Groton Pfizer colleagues are leading the way in drug development, providing vital information, tools, technologies, data, drug targets, and compounds to scientists around the globe, at every level of drug discovery and development, and across all of Pfizer’s therapeutic areas. Nearly every Pfizer product is developed, in part, in Groton. Examples of colleagues’ expertise include tissue and tumor targeting, pediatric drug delivery, and drug-to-drug interaction. The site’s key capabilities include the following functions:
Development Operations: Oversees operational delivery of Pfizer’s clinical portfolio maintaining high levels of regulatory compliance, delivering quality data, and monitoring patient safety in Pfizer’s clinical trials.
Drug Safety Research and Development: Provides safety assessments of new drug target selection, by designing and executing drug safety / toxicity studies required for support of early clinical trials.
Medicinal Chemistry: The team is tasked with the design and synthesis of candidate drug molecules. Key disciplines include Structural Biology and Biophysics; Synthetic, Computational and Analytical Chemistry; Natural product biosynthesis and protein conjugation technologies.
Worldwide Safety and Regulatory: Develops regulatory strategy for assets potentially selected for new drug applications, and maintains global pharmacovigiliance standards for development compounds and mature products.
Pharmacokinetics, Dynamics & Metabolism: Scientists within this team are accountable for evaluating the absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion of our development candidates, as well as building the key properties into the design of new therapies. In addition, scientists in this team undertake early pharmacology and high throughput screening to identify novel lead compounds, which form the basis of our early drug discovery programs.
Pharmaceutical Sciences: Determines how the drug will be made, including formulation (the recipe for making a drug, including inactive ingredients used to hold it together and allow it to dissolve at the right time), delivery mechanism (the way the drug is taken – by mouth, injection, inhaler) and large-scale manufacturing methodologies (how you make the drug in large quantities).