Posts tagged ‘pharma market analysis’
Sally Church, PhD on Pharma Strategy Blog has written about research on macrophage cell surface protein S100A10 and the role this plays in cancer metastasis and tumor growth.
As Sally notes, “macrophages are critical in driving tumour growth, invasion and metastasis. Macrophages are like the Pacmen of cells…” What a great visual metaphor!
Recently published research now shows that the macrophage cell surface protein, S100A10 plays an important role in how macrophages move to the site of tumor growth, a process that is key to tumor development and angiogenesis.
Is S100A10 a potential druggable target? You will have to read Sally’s insightful blog post to learn more.
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.
Earlier this summer, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Oncology Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) announced a positive decision for Seattle Genetics’ Adcetris™ (brentuximab vedotin) in Hodgkin Lymphoma (HL) and Analplastic Large Cell Lymphoma (ALCL).
As Sally Church on Pharma Strategy Blog reported earlier this week, Seattle Genetics has just received fast track approval from the FDA for Adcetris™, a CD30-directed antibody drug-conjugate.
Using the company announced price of $13,500 per dose, Sally in her blog post analyzed the clinical trial data and treatment regimens to come up with a likely cost for a course of treatment in the range of $94,500 – $121,500.
Sally goes on to note that the “overall treatment cost will therefore be typically less than the $120K cost of treatment for BMS’s ipilimumab (Yervoy) in metastatic melanoma.”
The clinical data for Adcetris™ is impressive, and patients will most certainly benefit from the availability of this new treatment. Adcetris™ is the first antibody drug conjugate (ADC) technology to come to market.
You can read more about Sally’s analysis of the Adcetris™ price and other ADC products in the pipeline such as Roche’s T-DM1 on Pharma Strategy Blog.
At ASCO this year, there was a lot of interest in BRAF mutated melanoma, with data being presented in the plenary session on vemurafenib (PLX4032) and ipilimumab.
However, as Sally Church on Pharma Strategy Blog points out, 40% of all new cancer cases are due to non-melanoma skin cancer, with over one million diagnoses each year in the US.
Sally discusses research published in the AACR journal Cancer Research by Mei Ming and colleagues from the University of Chicago on how the tumor suppressor gene phosphatase and tensin homolog deleted from chromosome ten (PTEN) regulates UVB-induced DNA damage.
The research shows that PTEN has a key role to play in human skin cancer formation and progression with low levels of PTEN associated with slower rates of DNA repair after UVB radiation damage.
As Sally notes on her blog, “a greater understanding of the molecular mechanisms underpinning non-melanoma skin cancer potentially means that chemoprevention strategies can be developed down the road.”
You can read more about the role PTEN plays in non-melanoma skin cancer on Pharma Strategy Blog.
As marketing strategy consultants we are often called upon to look at the market opportunity in the United states for a company, a new drug or indication.
In order to do this it’s necessary to keep on top of the regulatory and reimbursement challenges that pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies face in the U.S. market.
Healthcare reform is a topic of active debate, especially with the passing of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by Congress. Pieter Droppert on Biotech Strategy Blog looks at what we can learn two years after healthcare reform took place in Massachusetts.
The findings are interesting, access to insurance coverage is not the same as access to healthcare, and the spiraling costs remain the biggest challenge that has to be overcome. You can read more on Biotech 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).