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This excerpt taken from the ELN 6-K filed Aug 28, 2009. CHIEF
EXECUTIVE OFFICER’S STATEMENT
To Our Shareholders:
Our focus remains squarely on disciplined and continuous
investment in science and advancing our diversified clinical
portfolio to patients. During the first half of 2009, while we
continued to improve operating performance, we also achieved
several important strategic milestones. Most importantly, we
completed our strategic review process, begun in January of this
year, with the announcement in early July of a transformative
transaction with Johnson & Johnson.
There were a number of key objectives for the strategic review
process, all of which we believe will be accomplished upon
closing this transaction in the second half of the year. The
transaction will provide the Company with significant strategic
and financial flexibility and allows our shareholders the
opportunity to participate in the advancement of our science and
pipeline over time. In addition, we believe that
Johnson & Johnson’s scientific expertise and
global commercial reach will ensure that we realize the full
potential of the Alzheimer’s Immunotherapy Program.
Tysabri®
continues to grow, recording in-market sales of
$481.3 million in the first half of 2009, an increase of
34% over the $359.7 million recorded in the same time
period of 2008. At the end of June 2009, approximately
43,300 patients were on therapy worldwide, an increase of
36% over the 31,800 who were on therapy at the end of June 2008.
We are continuing to work with Biogen Idec, our collaborator on
Tysabri, and the clinical community, to better understand
both the efficacy and safety of the therapy.
Our Elan Drug Technologies (EDT) business also made further
progress, while at the same time continuing to diversify the
Company’s risk. By providing industry-leading advances in
drug delivery technology, we are able to participate in the
commercialization of several molecules with different
pharmaceutical collaborators. The recent approval of
Johnson & Johnson’s
Invega®
Sustennatm,
which utilizes our
NanoCrystal®
technology, demonstrates how EDT has been able to advance
treatment options for a variety of therapies.
The recent International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease
(ICAD), clearly demonstrated the progress that we, along with
our collaborator, Transition Therapeutics, have made on ELND005.
Phase 1 data was presented that indicated treatment with ELND005
achieves desired concentrations in human brain tissue and
cerebrospinal fluid when given orally, which has proven to be a
significant hurdle for other drugs in this area.
Lastly, we achieved another significant milestone in the first
half of the year by adding a fifth potential therapeutic
approach for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease to our
pipeline, the p75 ligand program in collaboration with
PharmatrophiX. These compounds have the potential to protect the
neurons most affected by Alzheimer’s disease. By adding
these pre-clinical compounds to our pipeline, we gain an
orally-available potential therapeutic platform that attacks
Alzheimer’s disease from a different, and potentially
complementary, approach to potential therapeutics in our
pipeline.
The significant accomplishments of the first half of 2009 once
again demonstrate our position as a leader in neuroscience, with
a clear focus on disease-modifying novel therapeutics. At Elan,
we believe we are in the first decade of what will be a century
of delivering new innovative therapies to patients suffering
from a wide variety of neurological disorders. We are confident
that Elan, through our industry leading pipeline, will continue
to define the future of degenerative neurological therapies.
G. Kelly Martin
Chief Executive Officer
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