Shares in Irish-headquartered pharmaceutical company Elan closed up 4.6 per cent on the New York Stock Exchange at $26.78 last night after US regulators approved the sale of it's anti-pain drug Prialt, also known as ziconotide.
Prialt is the first in a new category of drugs for treating patients suffering from severe, chronic pain to have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The drug will be available in the US in late January and Elan expects to get approval from European regulators in the first quarter of 2005.
According to reports in the Wall Street Journal the drug could generate annual sales of $250 million at its peak.
"Prialt is an innovative new treatment and an important therapeutic advance for patients who suffer from severe chronic pain," said Mr Lars Ekman, executive vice president for Research and Development with Elan.
"The first new IT analgesic approved in more than two decades, Prialt offers an important new option for physicians and patients, based on one of the largest and most comprehensive IT analgesic safety databases available."
Prialt is a synthetic version of a naturally occurring pain killer found in in a marine snail known as Conus magus.