Guess Teva is losing its patent - so have a new start up Pharma make its drug slow release to make it new and get a patent then sell Copaxone as a new choice - what crap!

Mapi pharma patents new MS drug(22/11/13)

Once-a-month treatment for multiple sclerosis gains US patent – inching Israeli pharma company closer to the market.

Only three years after going into business in Ness Ziona, Israel, Mapi Pharma has won a US patent for a promising drug in its pipeline – a slow-release form of glatiramer acetate for treating multiple sclerosis (MS) symptoms just once a month.

“We believe in two to three years they could be in the final stage of development, and about three years to market,” says Mapi Pharma president and CEO Ehud Marom.

Informed by his background at Teva Pharmaceuticals, where he headed global operations for innovative drugs including Copaxone; at Peptor, where he led development of diabetes drug DiaPep; and at Gamida Cell, Makhteshim-Agan and Pharma Two B, Marom came to Mapi knowing exactly what he wanted to focus on.

“We started mainly at ‘eye level’ with technologies to improve patients’ quality of life,” he tells ISRAEL21c.

“For MS, we chose to do something to improve the life of the patient by developing a technology that can be injected once a month instead of daily.”

MS drug

Mapi’s glatiramer acetate product uses the same active therapeutic agent as the currently used drug, just in a novel form.

“The idea is to let the active material release slowly — and not as it is done today, immediately — by coating the active material with polymers. This provides a better quality of life, it’s safer and more convenient, and improves compliance and efficacy,” says Marom. “The FDA is supporting this way of delivering drugs for people with chronic diseases.”

MS is a chronic, often disabling disease that attacks the central nervous system. Unpredictablesymptoms include numbness in the limbs, paralysis and loss of vision. The global market for MS pharmaceuticals is estimated to be approximately $10 billion.

Clinical trials for efficacy are set to start in January in Israel, and then in European and US centers. “There is a high chance that the efficacy will be the same because we changed the formulation, not the active molecules,” he points out.

Source: ISRAEL21C © 2013 ISRAEL21C (22/11/13)