In this case, this past week J.P. Morgan hosted an annual health-care conference, and the linked story suggest Tysabri (Antegren or natalizumab) was the hit of the show:

"'We think it's one of the most important product launches in the history of biotechnology," said J.P. Morgan analyst Ron Renaud...'

'We believe that a lot of patients will demand to be switched,' said Elan's chief of research and development, Lars Eckman.

Eckman added that at this point, healthcare insurers seem to have little reservation covering the drug, which can cost up to $23,000 a year..."There's been no push back on reimbursement," said Eckman. "This is because it's effective."

Click "read more" to get the link to the full story...

The article below quotes Serono, maker of the competing treatment Rebif, as saying that Elan/Biogen's newly released Tysabri is off to a slow start-- "It's very early days, but it doesn't look like they're selling much... We know from our experience with Rebif that the US is a slow market, very difficult to penetrate." (This is MS community: Is this true? If you're on Tysabri, please post in our Tysabri user's thread)

This kind of rivalry is no surprise, as the stock price of Serono has taken a large hit over recent months, purportedly because of worries that Tysabri will steal market share from Rebif.

More interesting than this predictable tit-for-tat argument is that Serono commented on Mylinax, oral cladribine (article below). Serono said,: "It all depends on how quickly we can recruit patients for the trial, but we anticipate finishing trials by 2007, which means it could be on the market by 2008, 2009 latest..."

"We believe from our market research that this (an oral MS treatment) is the holy grail," he said, deeming the drug a potential blockbuster.