Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Teva Says Parkinson's Drug Is First to Slow Disease

From Bloomberg:
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. said its Azilect pill is the first to slow the progression of Parkinson's disease in new findings that may increase sales of the medicine to more than $1 billion.

Patients who took the 1-milligram dose of Azilect at the outset of an 18-month trial showed ``significant improvement'' over patients who started nine months later, Petah Tikvah, Israel-based Teva said in a statement today. The test results were presented at a medical conference in Madrid today.

Azilect, Teva's second original product, was introduced in 2005 to treat the symptoms of Parkinson's, an incurable disease that destroys patients' nerve functions. Teva needs to replace revenue from its first original drug, Copaxone for multiple sclerosis, before it loses patent protection in 2014. Peak sales of the pill may now surpass $1 billion, instead of an estimated $250 million a year, said Ronny Gal, who follows Teva at Sanford C. Bernstein in New York, in a June 16 interview. ...more

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