Sometimes,
lessis
more. Fewer needle pricks results in more sales. A lower
dose of a drug causes a better side-effect profile.
Seems to be working for
Novartis (NYSE: NVS).
The company announced pretty good looking phase 3 trial
data for its oral multiple sclerosis drug, FTY720, today.
Multiple sclerosis drugs from
Teva Pharmaceutical (Nasdaq: TEVA), Bayer,
Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), and others have to be
injected, and Novartis is in
a raceagainst Merck KGaA to bring the first oral multiple
sclerosis drug to market.
Biogen Idec (Nasdaq: BIIB) also has an oral
MS drug, BG-12, but it's a little farther behind and won't
have phase 3 data for another year or more.
At the lower dose, FTY720 reduced the relapse rate by 54%
and the progression of disability by 30%, compared with the
placebo. That's probably not as good as Biogen and
Elan 's (NYSE: ELN) Tysabri, but it doesn't
have to be because the
side-effect profileisn't as bad, especially at the lower
dose. In fact, the lower dose worked well enough, with fewer
side effects than the higher dose, that Novartis just plans
to ask the Food and Drug Administration and the European
Union agency to approve the lower dose.
With the development of oral multiple sclerosis drugs, we
may see a shift as doctors start treating multiple sclerosis
more like diabetes. Patients start on less powerful but more
convenient oral medications and then progress to injectable
drugs once they need them.
Novartis has been preparing to sell FTY720 for a while,
even though the drug's launch is still about a year away. In
a rather
complicated deal, Novartis is marketing Extavia, an exact
copy of Bayer's multiple sclerosis drug Betaseron. With sales
reps already in place, Novartis should be able to hit the
ground running once U.S. and EU regulators approve
FTY720.
Now all Novartis needs is a brand name, because I'm not
sure we can extend this less-is-more analogy to a name like
FTY720.
This article was originally published as
Less Is More for Novartison
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