Block­buster to be? No­var­tis snags a ma­jor win as FDA OKs a top PhI­II drug -- will a pric­ing con­tro­ver­sy fol­low?

Af­ter rack­ing up a large batch of pos­i­tive da­ta demon­strat­ing its abil­i­ty to slow the rate of dis­ease pro­gres­sion, No­var­tis to­day toast­ed an FDA ap­proval of their S1P mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis drug sipon­i­mod, soon to hit the mar­ket as Mayzent.

By most ac­counts, this is a block­buster to be. And it al­so could be a block­buster killer.

Eval­u­atePhar­ma pegged 2024 sales of this drug at $1.3 bil­lion, mak­ing it an im­por­tant part of No­var­tis’ late-stage pipeline and a check­mark in the win col­umn for de­vel­op­ment chief John Tsai and CEO Vas Narasimhan, who hand­ed him the job when Narasimhan moved up in the world.

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