Novartis therapy ‘has significant benefits for MS patients’

Novartis has said an investigational therapy for the treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS) could one day have a “major impact” on the way MS is treated in the future.

The claim comes after the publication of phase II clinical trial data for FTY720, which could become the first orally effective compound to help treat patients. Patients taking the drug demonstrated a reduction of inflammatory disease activity of 80 per cent, as measured through MRI scans.

In addition, the chances of developing a clinical relapse was reduced by 50 per cent of patients taking FTY720, in comparison to the placebo.

After the first six months, low levels of disease activity were “maintained” in people who still took the drug, while those who received the placebo but were then switched onto FTY720 treatment also displayed an improvement in symptoms.

Professor Ludwig Kappos, chief trial investigator and head of the department of neurology at the University Hospital of Basel, Switzerland, commented: “These results demonstrate that once-daily oral FTY720 provides an improvement in MRI measures of inflammation as well as in relapse-related clinical endpoints in patients with relapsing multiple sclerosis.”

He added that if the new phase III trials for the drug confirm the outcomes of the phase II trial, there would be potential that the therapy could change the way MS is treated in future.

According to the UK’s Multiple Sclerosis Society, 85,000 Britons suffer from the condition, caused by damage to the body’s myelin sheaths that are designed to protect nerves.