Posts tagged ‘KOL Market Research’
At the recent American Society of Clinical Oncology Genitourinary cancers symposium in Orlando (ASCO GU), Sally Church, PhD interviewed Professor Bertrand Tombal about some of the latest clinical research in prostate cancer.
Professor Tombal is a leading urologist from Belgium who we always enjoy listening to at major international scientific meetings.
He invests a lot of time in giving educational presentations that are thought provoking and strategic.
You can read Sally’s interview: “Making a difference in Advanced Prostate Cancer – an interview with Bertrand Tombal” on Pharma Strategy Blog.
In the interview, Professor Tombal says what prostate cancer clinical trial he would do if you gave him a million dollars. We are not going to give the game away by telling you the answer, only to say it’s a combination trial that has a sound scientific rationale.
Check out Sally’s excellent series of interviews on people who are “Making a difference to the lives of cancer patients” if you have not already done so.
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.
Pharma and biotech companies routinely seek the opinion of leading academics and researchers, but interviewing thought leaders (more commonly known as Key Opinion Leaders or KOLs) is an art, rather than a science.
Qualitative pharma market research typically consists of a structured interview arranged around a discussion guide that has scripted questions and probes. In our experience, such an overly structured approach is often not optimal with top tier KOLs.
Remember, these are extremely busy people and if you are fortunate enough to gain a short period of time from them (we normally do this over the phone), you need to use it wisely or they will soon be bored, distracted, cut you short and move on – unless you pique their curiosity and engage them in something that holds their interest.
Our approach is to:
- Focus on a few strategic questions or key issues
- Have a moderator who is knowledgeable about the topic so that the interview comes across as a scientific conversation
- Be prepared to listen and adjust follow-on questions accordingly
On Pharma Strategy Blog, you can read some of the KOL interviews that Sally Church, PhD has undertaken with leading business executives, academic researchers and clinicians.
Some of the thought leaders she has interviewed as part of her excellent “Making a Difference in the Lives of Cancer Patients” series include Alain Moussy (CEO of AB Science) Susan Desmond-Hellmann (Chancellor of UCSF) and Charles Sawyers (MSKCC – winner of the 2009 Lasker Award, and likely future Nobel Laureate).
If you would like to learn more about our Pharma KOL market research services, please do not hesitate to contact us.
To better showcase our pharmaceutical marketing strategy, KOL market research, new product development and competitive intelligence services we have recently upgraded the Icarus Consultants website.
Thanks to The Theme Foundry who provided outstanding customer service.
We hope that you like the new/look feel, particularly the homepage that combines company news, information on our services and why you should consider working with us.
Some of the new features you will see include:
- Video on the Homepage: we plan to change this regularly. At the moment it features a preview of ASCO 2012.
- New page with Case Studies. Client confidentiality prohibits us from saying too much, but we’ve attempted to give a flavor of some of our recent projects.
- Responsive theme: the site is now optimized for viewing on tablets and mobile devices.
If you have any comments about our new look or would like to learn more about our services, please contact us.
Do you know who your thought leaders are and what they think about your product?
March 10th, 2012
Daedalus
One of the emerging trends we saw at the recent European Association of Urology (EAU) Congress in Paris was an increase in the number of plenary and session presentations by physicians from Eastern European countries.
This trend is set to continue, and we expect to see more physicians from the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India & China) group of countries and other emerging markets presenting at global science and medical meetings in the future.
Poland is a good example of a country that should be on the radar of any global pharmaceutical company. It is one of the fastest growing economies in Europe, and was the only European country to avoid a recession in 2008-2009.
It was interesting to note that Tomasz Borkowski (Department of Urology at the Medical University of Warsaw) who gave a major session presentation at EAU on “Cancer induced bone disease – prevention and treatment’ listed only one company on his disclosures.
Clearly, some companies are ahead of others in identifying and building relationships with thought or key opinion leaders (KOLs) as they are commonly known.
One of the services we offer clients is market research with thought leaders at the global, national and regional level. Like all market research, this is anonymous – you don’t know the name or the institution and the physician doesn’t know who the sponsor is. This allows the doctor to speak more freely. This type of market research can provide valuable insights into what they think about a product or market opportunity with less bias.
Do you know who your thought leaders are and what think about your product? If not, please contact us and we would be delighted to help you meet your brand business goals.
Understanding the biology of colorectal cancer will lead to more rational drug development
January 31st, 2012
Daedalus
Cancer drug development is becoming more targeted and focused as a result of scientific advances. The understanding of ALK gene rearrangements in lung cancer led to the development of crizotinib (Xalkori) for the subset of patients who are ALK-positive.
Sally Church, Ph.D on Pharma Strategy Blog has reviewed some of the recent advances in our understanding of colororectal cancer (CRC).
Resistance to chemotherapy in colon cancer
As Sally noted, “the presence of the TFAP2E-DKK4 mutation may explain why some patients with colorectal cancer do better with chemotherapy than others.”
Inflammation linked to the early development of colon cancer
Researchers from MD Anderson Cancer Center have identified the role of inflammation and silencing of tumor suppressor genes in early colorectal cancer.
Understanding the biology of the disease could lead to the ability to identify those at high risk of developing colon cancer. Chemopreventative drugs could then be given to this subset of high risk patients to delay the onset of cancer. An exciting prospect!
Understanding the role of CIMP in early colorectal cancer
CpG island methylator phenotype (CIMP) can occur in 30% of colorectal cancer patients and has been shown to be an independent predictor of survival with 5FU in early or adjuvant CRC. CIMP may play an important role in tumor development. Expect to hear more on the link between inflammation, DNA methylation and early development of CRC.
Identifying subsets of patients will support rational drug development
Researchers have now shown that BRAF(V600E) mutations occur in 8-10% of colon cancers. The ability to identify this subset of patients could allow therapeutic options to be specifically targeted at them, in the same way that ALK+ lung cancer patients now receive crizotinib. Previously though, we didn’t know why vemurafenib was showing lack of efficacy in this group. New research has now given us some pointers.
As Sally noted on Pharma Strategy Blog, “a combination of vemurafenib and and an EGFR inhibitor such as as erlotinib, cetuximab or gefitinib, might be a useful clinical approach to try therapeutically in patients with colon cancer harboring the BRAFV600E mutation.”
As we learn more about the biology and early development of colorectal cancer, the ability to undertake rational drug development will increase. This is good news both for patients and for biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies who want to successfully bring new products to market.
The results from the BATTLE (Biomarker-Integrated Approaches of Targeted Therapy for Lung Cancer elimination) clinical trial in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) undertaken at MD Anderson Cancer Center were recently published in the new AACR journal Cancer Discovery.
The BATTLE study is a landmark in that tumor biopsies were done in “real time” with adaptive randomization to erlotinib, vandetanib, erlotinib plus bexarotene or sorafenib based on relevant molecular biomarkers from the needle biopsy specimens.
Sally Church who did her doctoral research on the early detection of lung disease, has does an excellent job on Pharma Strategy Blog of reviewing the findings from this landmark clinical trial. She discusses the latest results presented by Dr Waun ki Hong in the plenary session at the recent AACR annual meeting in Orlando.
Using Storify to integrate multimedia about the BATTLE trial, Sally explains why this is a ground breaking study. You can read more on Pharma Strategy Blog.
One element of brand positioning is ensuring that the messages about your product and how your customer sees it, are consistent. Messaging whether it be in the form of adverts, press releases or what key opinion leaders say is key to success in today’s information world.
Pieter Droppert on Biotech Strategy Blog, in his first video, outlines why he is attending Health Journalism 2011 in Philadelphia later this week. The annual meeting of the Association of Health Care Journalists offers the opportunity to see how the news makers approach topics.
You can see Pieter’s first video blog post below. Although video blogging takes longer to produce than writing a blog post, it is more engaging and we believe it is the way of the future. What do you think?
At the recent annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), Icarus Consultant’s oncology expert and social media guru generated video highlights for Pharma Strategy Blog; a first for Sally and no mean feat to shoot a video blog (vblog) after a full day at a conference.
In case you missed the videos, you can watch them below:
Day 1 highlights of the AACR Annual Meeting by Sally Church, PhD include how to use Twitter to keep in touch with breaking news at a meeting such as AACR, and what Sally thinks will be hot news.
Day 2 highlights of the AACR Annual Meeting by Sally Church, PhD include commentary on the plenary presentation by Dr Harold Varmus of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), exciting phase II data on GDC-0449, a hedgehog pathway inhibitor for the prevention of basal cell carcinoma in basal cell nevus syndrome (BCNS) patients, and the launch of a new journal, Cancer Discovery, by AACR.
You can read more about the AACR annual meeting on Pharma Strategy Blog.
Mice seem to get bad PR; there’s far more people that like cats……..So in the interests of fair balance, we’d like to draw attention to the increasing importance of preclinical mouse models in cancer drug development.
Pieter Droppert on Biotech Strategy Blog discusses how innovations in translational medicine, and improved mouse models of human cancer are having a major impact on bringing new cancer drugs to market.
So, time for some good thoughts about mice (with apologies to cat lovers out there).