Keep in mind that these prices are for the CML dosage. The dosages that will be tested for PD are less, about a third of the amount. Also, there may be as many as 10 times more people with PD than CML. The larger market should allow Novartis to lower overall pricing, and certainly would position the insurance companies to force it. Finally, there is also some research going on now testing the drug for Alzheimer's, which, if successful, would widen the market dramatically.

In any case, we still have a long way to go before this gets an approval. Reading the actual study results leaves me at about a 50/50 chance. There definitely was some improvement with the volunteers, albeit it could be attributed to placebo. Some of the blood measure improvements may be harder to attribute to placebo. Unfortunately, it just wasn't that good of a study to draw many conclusions. My biggest concern is actually how fast the improvement came on, and then how fast it disappeared when the treatments stopped. This, along with the evidence of increased dopamine in the patients, leads me to think that the drug may have had a symptomatic impact, but not necessarily an interventional one. If that's the case, we may not want to take a somewhat dangerous cancer drug for the rest of our lives if only for symptomatic relief and not for slowing or halting progression.

It definitely will be interesting to see what more vigorous, controlled, trials will show. Particularly when the volunteers are early and mid-stage rather than the later-stage patients in the reported study