Surveying The Changing Multiple Sclerosis Landscape

The highly competitive multiple sclerosis market, estimated to be $10 billion, is in flux. With the US launch in October 2010 of Novartis AG's Gilenya (fingolimod), the first oral disease-modifying therapy for MS, patients and physicians have a more convenient once-daily therapy that looks to be as efficacious as first-line injectables (the interferons and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.'s Copaxone (glatiramer acetate). But uncertainty concerning Gilenya's safety – not to mention the medicine's high price tag – means ample room exists for additional products in the MS armamentarium. In the next two years, pharma and biotech players expect to release Phase III data on six competing products; already analysts are handicapping how the results – especially data from new orals like Teva's laquinimod and Biogen Inc.'s BG-12 -- will impact market share of not only Gilenya, but current standard-of-care agents.

To better understand how prescribers view the rapidly changing MS landscape, IN VIVO and Gerson Lehman Group launched a nine-question survey in late January 2011 and obtained responses from 52...