Posts tagged ‘Aragon Pharmaceuticals’
Sally Church’s interview with Dr Charles Sawyers rated a “must read” by Forbes Health
May 5th, 2011
Daedalus
Sally Church invests a lot of her personal time in writing for Pharma Strategy Blog. With a focus on the science of new products and treatments in cancer and hematology, Sally willingly shares her passion, knowledge and expertise.
It is always a pleasure to receive endorsement from others. Matthew Herper from Forbes Health kindly highlighted Sally’s interview with Dr Charles Sawyers as a “must read.”
We agree. Dr Sawyers is one of the leading translational scientists in the United States who along with Dr Brian Druker and Dr Nick Lydon received the prestigious Lasker award for their work on imatinib (Gleevec/Glivec) in CML. Dr Sawyers is now working on prostate cancer, and in his interview with Sally, describes his latest work developing MDV3100 and ARN-509.
We unequivocally recommend reading Sally’s post on Pharma Strategy Blog, “Making a difference to the lives of cancer patients: An interview with Dr Charles Sawyers.”
Zytiga (abiraterone acetate) price will impact the Prostate Cancer market following FDA approval
April 29th, 2011
Daedalus
Sally Church on Pharma Strategy Blog has written about the FDA approval yesterday of Ortho Biotech’s ($JNJ) abiraterone acetate, brand name Zytiga for the treatment of castration resistant prostate cancer in patients who have received prior chemotherapy with docetaxel.
The final data showed a 4.6 month increase in overall survival (OS) in these very sick patients in late stage disease. It is to be expected that the response will be significantly better in patients treated earlier.
As Sally states in her post, “it is good to see new treatment options emerge for the treatment of castrate resistant prostate cancer.”
Abiraterone treatment has been priced competitively by JNJ, with a treatment price of around $40K ($5,000 per month for a median treatment cycle of 8 months). As Sally notes “this is very fair.”
The commercial impact for sanofi-aventis is likely to be huge. It’s hard not to see elderly or frail patients preferring 4 pills a day compared to chemotherapy with a side-effect profile that is far from optimal. The price of abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) is lower than cabazitaxel (Jevtana), which was approved early last year. The market opportunity for Jevtana looks less promising now that it has competition.
Sally, in her insightful post on Pharma Strategy Blog, also notes a possible impact on sipuleucel-T (Provenge) from Dendreon, which is $93K for three infusions. It’s hard not to see some off-label usage from urologists given that phase III trials for use of abiraterone in the pre-chemotherapy setting are already enrolled.
The prostate cancer market is currently a very dynamic and competitive one. With more new drugs on the horizon that may potentially be improvements on abiraterone acetate e.g. MDV3100 and ARN-509, it’s an exciting market to watch.
Sally Church has a number of posts on Pharma Strategy Blog that discuss the science and pharma marketing strategy for prostate cancer new products.
As marketing strategy consultants, it’s fascinating to watch the dynamics of a pharmaceutical market in rapid evolution.
With three new therapies for prostate cancer approved last year (cabazitaxel, denosumab, sipuleucel-T) and the approval of abiraterone acetate expected this month, the prostate cancer market is a fast changing one.
This is really good news for patients, and for a disease that effects 1 in 6 men in the United States, and is the most common non-skin cancer.
Pieter Droppert on Biotech Strategy Blog has some commentary from the recent annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) on additional new products in development that may change the landscape of this disease further.
You can read more about this on Biotech Strategy Blog.