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Biotech / Medical : 2010 Biotech Charity Contest -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jack Hartmann who wrote (249)	6/11/2010 4:26:02 PM
From: Jack Hartmann	Respond to of 356

June 11 (Bloomberg) -- Novartis AG rose in Zurich trading after winning a U.S. regulatory advisory panel’s backing to introduce the first pill to treat multiple sclerosis. Novartis’s Gilenia should be “generally recommended” as an initial treatment for MS, advisers to the Food and Drug Administration said in a 21-3 vote yesterday in Silver Spring, Maryland. The panel voted unanimously in favor of the pill’s safety and effectiveness. The agency, which usually follows its panels’ recommendations, though isn’t required to do so, is scheduled to decide whether to approve Gilenia by September. The drugmaker, based in Basel, Switzerland, has been in a race with Merck KGaA to sell the first pill to delay progression of MS. The neurological disease affects 2.5 million people worldwide, many of whom have trouble sticking with current therapies because they’re difficult to use or have side effects, according to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, a New York-based patient group. Current treatments are injectable drugs led by Biogen Idec Inc.’s Avonex, Merck KGaA’s Rebif and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.’s Copaxone. “This is an encouraging and important milestone for the MS community,” said Patricia O’Looney, vice president for biomedical research at the society, said in a statement issued by Novartis yesterday. “We believe that a treatment that reduces relapses and slows disability progression in a convenient oral formulation could encourage more people with MS to initiate treatment.”