Posts tagged ‘biotech strategy consulting’
Making sense of data is what we do. We live in a world where, thanks to the internet, the sheer volume of available data is increasing at an enormous rate.
Too often we see staff at client companies focus their energy on gathering data as cheaply as possible, instead of asking or seeking to understand what does all the data mean from a competitive stand point?
Data is now commoditized. Anyone can gain access to past ASCO Virtual Meetings, for example, and watch a rerun of conference presentations. While obtaining data is relatively easy, insights are a lot more expensive and difficult to generate.
Why?
Well, they require the application of knowledge, deep understanding and expertise of the topic to analyze, conceptualize and visualize data, and then extrapolate what it means to a company or product.
Here’s a fun video that shows how a picture tells a thousand words. Professor Hans Rosling, in this excerpt from a BBC documentary, shows the public health history of 200 countries in 4 minutes…
Turning data into a powerful illustration requires the expenditure of intellectual effort.
Making sense of data is what we do at Icarus Consultants.
We are delighted to announce the public launch of our annual “New Products MBA” program that involves custom monthly case studies and 1:1 coaching. Previously by private request only, this program is designed for senior executives with responsibility for new product development or those involved with strategic decision making in this area.
How does the coaching program work?
This is an individual program and lasts for one year during which 10 monthly case studies are undertaken on topics selected by the participant. These could be on a tumor type, pathway, indication or topic related to drug development e.g. the science and commercial challenges around chimeric antigen receptors. Case study topics are typically focused around the sponsoring company portfolio to enable learnings to be applied.
Each case study includes a 10-15 page written paper with background, analysis, insights and key strategic questions. Additional material in the form of scientific papers to read and videos to watch is also provided. The commitment required is equivalent to undertaking an Executive MBA.
Following review of the case study and accompanying material, a 1 to 1.5 hour 1:1 coaching session takes place by telephone with Sally Church, PhD in which key learnings are discussed.
Importantly, the program does not discuss confidential or proprietary information, it is focused on helping participants ask the right questions, not making a key decision for them.
Why is a new products coaching program necessary?
In recent years, oncology has become a fast changing environment where it is increasingly important to be able to see the scientific connections between pathways and tumor types, understand the emerging impact of new competitors with novel mechanisms of action, as well as biomarkers and companion diagnostics, and be aware of the evolving landscape for next generation immunotherapies.
What do participants gain from this program?
The result of this coaching program will be an increased scientific understanding that enhances the ability to ask the right strategic questions of New Product Development and Brand Marketing teams and enable more in-depth strategic collaboration at the both the senior and middle management level.
What level of staff is this program aimed at?
This program was originally developed for a board level senior executive at a global pharmaceutical company. Based on its success we are making it publicly available in 2013 to a limited number of participants. We anticipate that it would benefit those at the Senior Director to Executive VP level who are involved with a range of oncology new products.
How much does this coaching program cost?
The program is comparable in cost to attending an Executive MBA, please contact us if you would like to learn more.
Multiple Myeloma (MM) is forecast to be a hot topic at the forthcoming annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) that starts in Atlanta next week.
There are four “Super Friday” satellite symposia and over 700+ MM abstracts that will be presented in multiple oral and poster sessions. If you add in the recent FDA approval for carfilzomib (Kyprolis) and the anticipation that pomalidomide (Actimid) will be approved soon, there’s a lot going on.
We specialize in Thought Leader or Key Opinion Leader (KOL) market research. Often projects are a hybrid where we discuss high-level strategic issues with KOLs and ask community hematology-oncologists or medical oncologists more practice-focused questions.
Based on our experience, multiple myeloma is a challenging topic for pharma market research:
- Treatment regimens can be complex, even some community medical oncologists have told us they are challenged by them.
- Treatment decisions are multifactorial and individualized, so it’s often hard for community based physicians to generalize.
- High prescribing community physicians may be in small towns not near a market research facility, requiring telephone interviews.
- Thought leaders are busy people – you need to focus on a few key questions you want them to answer.
- Access to top-tier thought leaders is difficult, they often will only talk to people they know or have met at medical or scientific meetings.
If you have plans to be in Atlanta for ASH, do contact us. We’d welcome the opportunity to meet up and tell you more about what we do.
Sally Church, PhD has been included in the FierceBiotech Top Voices in Biotech Twittersphere published today.
It is always good to receive recognition of Sally’s expertise in cancer drug development and the way she actively engages in social media (Sally writes as @MaverickNY on Twitter).
The Biotech Twittersphere is a community we are pleased to be part of. It’s where information is shared and discussions take place in real-time about new clinical trial results, and the impact for patients and companies. Sally is widely regarded as an industry expert in oncology/hematology new product development and commercialization.
Thanks FierceBiotech for the recognition!
The Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act (ACA) means that the sun did not set on the provisions of the Physician Payment Sunshine Act that were contained within it.
Manufacturers of pharmaceuticals and medical devices will be required to report all payments and transfers of value (e.g. honoraria, consulting fees, travel expenses, meals) made to physicians and teaching hospitals.
The good news for Pharma market research vendors is that anonymous market research, where the sponsoring company does not know the names of the doctors interviewed, does not have to be reported.
Market research is not referred to directly in section 6002 of the ACA, but the “exemption” can be inferred from the definition of “payment or other transfer of value” in the Act:
Such term does not include a transfer of anything of value that is made indirectly to a covered recipient through a third party in connection with an activity or service in the case where the applicable manufacturer is unaware of the identity of the covered recipient.
This makes a lot of sense, after all, how can you potentially influence prescribing if you don’t know who is being paid by your market research vendor.
If you would like to know about our Pharma market research services and how we incorporate thought leader (KOL) insights into our Pharma strategy consulting projects, please contact us.
There was a lot of interesting science at the recent AACR-NCI-EORTC Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics international conference in San Francisco.
In particular, the poster sessions offered the opportunity to discuss pre-clinical and early drug development work, and share insights into pathways and mechanisms of action. If you are in new product development, it’s a key meeting to attend.
What was the news at AACR molecular targets?
Sally Church on Pharma Strategy Blog aggregated the live tweets from the joint AACR-NCI-EORTC meeting, although the absence of wifi in the plenary sessions meant that there were fewer tweets than might have been expected.
Sally has written about some of the data presented on breast cancer at the meeting. In her insightful post she reviews the Syndax data for entinostat in second-line ER/PR+ breast cancer, and also asks whether ALK is a new target in inflammatory breast cancer (IBC)?
From what was heard at the meeting, there will be a lot of new breast cancer data at the forthcoming San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) that Sally will also be attending.
More insights from AACR molecular targets will be available on Pharma Strategy Blog in the next few days.
Meanwhile on Biotech Strategy Blog, Pieter Droppert has written about some of the sessions he attended in San Francisco on:
- Overcoming barriers to new cancer drug development
- Improving cancer clinical trial design
- Prostate Cancer
Next year’s 2012 molecular targets meeting will be in Dublin, good news for all those who like Guinness!
At Icarus Consultants, we help pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies bring new products to market.
When we look at the market opportunity for a new product, it’s not enough to have a great product, key to success is getting paid for it. Pricing and reimbursement are important in the commercial strategy!
Is it better to obtain the highest price for a new targeted therapy or alternatively have a lower price and obtain more market share? From a marketing strategy perspective, there is sometimes a case to be made for a lower price, but it’s a hard sell to convince senior management they are not leaving money on the table.
As to cancer immunotherapy, Dendreon with sipuleucel-T have shown that it can offer a survival benefits to some cancer patients. Other vaccines and immunotherapies are in development.
However, as Pieter Droppert points out in an insightful post on Biotech Strategy blog about a pilot study for PANVAC (Bavarian Nordic, CV-301), there remain a number of challenges that still have to be overcome. These include:
- How do we identify upfront which patients will respond to the vaccine?
- How do we evaluate how well patients are doing without clinically validated surrogate markers to aid in assessment?
You can read more on Biotech Strategy Blog.
There is a plenary session on cancer immunotherapy at the AACR-NCI-EORTC Cancer Molecular Targets & Therapeutics conference that starts in San Francisco tomorrow.
We look forward to obtaining further insights on the opportunities and challenges with cancer immunotherapy at this meeting.
Last week, Biotech Strategy Blog celebrated one year of publication!
Two of the most read posts on Biotech Strategy Blog in its first year were:
- Lucentis v Avastin CATT trial results in AMD (briefing at ARVO)
- Prostate Cancer Intervention versus Observation (PIVOT) trial data (presented in plenary session at AUA)
You can read more on Biotech Strategy Blog about the top posts of the past year. Some of the topics Pieter Droppert has most enjoyed writing about include: radium-223 (Alpharadin) and use of nanotechnology to detect blast injuries.
We look forward to further coverage of news from medical and scientific congresses on Biotech Strategy Blog as it enters a second year.
Pieter will be at the AACR-NCI-EORTC molecular targets and cancer therapeutics meeting in San Francisco in two weeks time.
The favorite scientific meeting of Sally Church, PhD is the American Association for Cancer Research AACR-NCI-EORTC Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics international conference that alternates each year between Europe and the United States.
This year it is being held in San Francisco from November 12-16, 2011, and already AACR has announced that a lot of new data will be presented on early stage new products in development.
On Pharma Strategy Blog, Sally notes the “luminaries” in personalized medicine that she is looking forward to hearing from in San Francisco.
You can read more about the fall cancer conferences that Sally will be attending on Pharma Strategy Blog.
Pieter Droppert on Biotech Strategy Blog also mentions the Molecular Targets conference and his interest in the plenary session chaired by Frank McCormick on “rational cancer drug development for targeted drugs.”
The potential for academia to facilitate combination trials with drugs from different companies was highlighted in Sally Church’s recent video interview with Gordon B Mills, MD PhD from UT MD Anderson Cancer Center.
If you have plans to be in San Francisco for the Molecular Targets conference do let us know. In addition to hearing about great science – networking and meeting people is one of the big reasons to attend.
One of the pharma marketing strategy consulting services that we offer clients is a competitive landscape, market opportunity report.
These custom reports analyze a pathway, disease, tumor type or competitive set, and can include a thorough analysis of clinical data, biomarkers, epidemiology, market size and competitor activity. All our work comes with actionable insights and strategic recommendations.
Once our clients understand the competitive landscape, and the market opportunity for their product we often generate a path to market strategy.
One of the ways our consultants keep abreast of current pharma/biotech industry news is through writing about science and clinical data.
Following the recent 2011 European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress (EMCC 2011), the joint meeting of ESMO, ECCO and ESTRO, Sally Church wrote an in-depth analysis of the phase II data for T-DM1 (trastuzumab emtansine) in first line metastatic breast cancer. You can read more on Pharma Strategy Blog.
Meanwhile on Biotech Strategy Blog, Pieter Droppert interviewed Dr Chris Parker about the phase III, ALSYMPCA trial results for radium-223 (Alpharadin) in advanced prostate cancer.
This radiopharmaceutical provides new treatment options for a neglected group of men who are unable to take chemotherapy. You can read more on Biotech Strategy Blog, and also watch the video interview below: