In October, we announced our decision to return all rights for safinamide in Parkinson’s disease and other therapeutic applications to our partner Newron Pharmaceuticals effective April 2012. Our decision was made as part of the ongoing review and re-prioritization of our R&D pipeline. In Merck Serono’s view, safinamide has a more limited market potential than originally expected. We fully wrote off the book value of safinamide by the end of the second quarter of 2011. We will meet our contractual and ethical commitments regarding the ongoing clinical development program for safinamide in Parkinson’s disease and will work with Newron to conduct an appropriate transfer of the program to Newron. This applies in particular to the two Phase III studies MOTION and SETTLE, for which patient recruitment was completed in the summer. We will continue to pursue innovative therapeutic options in the field of neurodegenerative diseases above and beyond MS and are currently investigating suitable indications.
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