Sanofi stops marketing Teva's Copaxone in USA

French drug major Sanofi-Aventis has stopped marketing Copaxone (glatiramer), a drug for the treatment of multiple sclerosis, in the USA. The company will lose nearly 1.0 billion euros ($1.58 billion) in sales in a full year. Copaxone was developed by the Israeli drugmaker Teva which did not have a sales force large enough to launch the product in 1997. Commercialization was assigned to Germany's Hoechst and so later to Sanofi-Aventis. Total turnover of Copaxone last year reached 1.2 billion euros with 800.0 million euros coming from the USA. However, as the agreement with Teva has now expired, the Israeli firm will take over US sales. Sanofi-Aventis sales as a whole are expected to dip 1% to about 27.9 billion euros in 2008, according to a report from analysts at Credit Suisse.