Me-too drug

[3][6] They are commonly used and include several beta blockers, antidepressants and stomach acid reducing and cholesterol lowering drugs.

[7] In 1964, Louis Lasagna described me-too drugs as being “hard to justify putting into man at all, let alone on the market”.

[1] The proton-pump inhibitor Nexium by AstraZeneca is a me-too which was granted its patent by showing that it was effective for heartburn, not that it was better than its precursor, Prilosec.

Considered a new drug by the FDA, Nexium was patented separately, sold for eight times the cost of its generic esomeprazole and advertised as significantly better than its predecessor, a move the company received much criticism for, with a subsequent class action lawsuit filed against them.

[1] Several me-too Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors have been developed for maintenance treatment in chronic depression.

These include Paxil (paroxetine), Celexa (citalopram), Zoloft (sertraline), Lexapro (escitalopram) and Prozac (fluoxetine).

Lexapro, the "me too" drug released several years after Celexa thus extending the patent life, is a purified form of just the left-handed version (the "es" in "es-citalopram").

[17] Gilead Science's Descovy is a me-too drug of Truvada, a popular Antiretroviral also used to prevent HIV infection in healthy people.

In 2005, a report by the International Policy Network defended me-toos, describing their development as "incremental improvements on already existing drugs".

[20] The report stated: ... this often represent(s) advances in safety and efficacy, along with providing new formulations and dosing options that significantly increase patient compliance.

Additionally, pharmaceutical companies depend on incremental innovations to provide the revenue that will support the development of more risky “block-buster” drugs.