hot off the wire, a Bloomberg Exclusive:

BioMS May Give Lilly $5 Billion Cure for Expiring Drug Patents

By Kelly Riddell

Dec. 26 (Bloomberg) -- BioMS Medical Corp., a one-drug biotechnology company in Edmonton, Alberta, may hold a partial answer as to how Eli Lilly & Co. will replace $9.9 billion in sales threatened by expiring patents.

Lilly signed a $497 million licensing and development agreement for BioMS’s dirucotide, potentially the first treatment for advanced forms of multiple sclerosis to come to market. The medicine, which entered final trials, has so far escaped side effects such as influenza-like symptoms, fatigue and skin cancer that were reported by Basel, Switzerland-based Novartis AG on fingolimod, another late-stage drug in testing for the disease.

A mid-level study of dirucotide, involving 218 subjects, had “very impressive features to it,” according to Bill Chin, Lily’s vice president of discovery and clinical investigation. The drug represents a chance for “a breakthrough,” he said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...ZNs&refer=home