Bloomberg.com:Top WorldwideNovartis will present data at the European Neurological Society meeting in Vienna on a study of the medicine, called FTY720, in 281 patients with relapsing forms of the debilitating illness. Existing medicines including Rebif, Avonex and Betaseron all have to be injected. Oral treatments may capture as much as 40 percent of the market, Serono Deputy Chief Executive Jacques Theurillat said April 12.....The Novartis drug has a number of hurdles to overcome. The data being presented is only from the second of the three stages of testing generally required before approval. Regulators are also likely to be cautious following the early approval and then recall of Biogen Idec and Elan Corp.'s Tysabri, Lombard Odier analyst Karl Heinz Koch said......Preliminary data released earlier this month showed that FTY720 cut the rate of MS relapses by about 55 percent compared with placebo. Seventy percent of the patients on placebo were relapse-free, compared with 86 percent of the patients in both groups taking the drug, the study, led by Ludwig Kappos at the University Hospital in Basel, Switzerland, Novartis' hometown, showed.

In a different study, Tysabri cut the rate of MS relapses by 66 percent compared with a placebo in a trial of 942 patients. Data from clinical trials show that interferons like Avonex and Rebif reduce relapses by about 30 to 40 percent.