MS drug Gilenya loses market share

Daniel Acker / Bloomberg

Pump prices have slipped less than a penny a gallon.

Novartis AG's Gilenya multiple sclerosis pill lost market share for the first time in January, following the deaths of some patients soon after taking the first pill available for the disease in the United States.

Gilenya's share of the U.S. market for so-called immunomodulatory drugs against MS fell to 6.1 percent from 6.2 percent in December, according to data from Wolters Kluwer NV, a market research company. The decline was the first after 15 months of growth, at a median of 15 percent a month, since the treatment received U.S. regulatory approval in September 2010.

The Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency are investigating 11 deaths among Gilenya patients. In the past month, analysts have cut their forecasts for peak sales of Gilenya by 10 percent to $2.1 billion in 2016, according to the average of six estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

The deaths have "made me a little more cautious," said Aaron Miller, chief medical officer of the U.S. National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and a medical director at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. "I am not somebody who has recommended Gilenya as a first-line drug prior to these reports, and I'm still not recommending it as a first-line drug until we get more data."

The Ritz-Carlton Kapalua hotel in Hawaii, a luxury ski resort in the Rockies and a Manhattan boutique hotel are among the last holdings of Lehman Bros., the investment house whose spectacular bust triggered the worst of the 2008 financial crisis.

The bank said Tuesday that it will begin unloading its stakes in those properties in April as it prepares to exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and finally meet its end.

Lehman's $639 billion bankruptcy remains the largest in U.S. history. It went under on Sept. 15, 2008, the same week that the government rescued AIG, and the $700 billion bailout for major banks was conceived.

Gasoline prices have finally dropped after 27 straight days of increases.

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MS drug Gilenya loses market share