Adalat was the first German pharmaceutical to be awarded the highly prestigious ‘Prix Galien’ in 1980. In the same year, Dr. Ahmed Hegazy (1939-2021) submitted his invention of an extended release effect through a solid medicinal preparation with nifedipine to the German Patent Office in Munich and patented “Nifedipine 1-4 m2/g”. His invention became known as "Adalat retard" from Bayer. The active ingredient is now released over a period of up to 36 hours. With the new daily dosis and increasing heart diseases (every 2nd West German citizen died of a heart condition in the 1970s), Adalat replaced Aspirin in the 1990s as the biggest single product of Bayer: 'These measures resulted in sales increasing to US $ 1.7 billion in 2000, even though the preparation had already been on the market for a quarter of a century.’ On October 14, 1991, Dr. Hegazy was awarded the Otto Bayer Medal (not related to the company founder) for solubilizing poorly soluble active ingredients such as nifedipine. With this prize, the Bayer Group has been honoring excellent research since 1984. By 2020, 528 researchers had received the award. A 1995 US lawsuit in which Dr. Hegazy defended his patent, found that Pfizer's Procardia XL product was also based on this patent.