Posts tagged ‘pharma market intelligence’
We live in a world of data that threatens to overwhelm our work and personal lives. Part of the reason for this is the price of data storage continues to fall dramatically.
Today, an external hard drive offers a 1TB capacity; a few years ago the same product offered 100GB. A 10x increase in storage capacity for the same money in the space of a few years.
Data is now available from online posters, abstracts, webcasts and presentations. We also have Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and other social media competing for our time.
ASCO 2011: “the never ending walk”
What this means is that if you plan to attend a major medical or scientific meeting such as the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), which offers a lot of data, you need to have a conference coverage strategy.
Here are a few tips we suggest you consider:
Don’t go for a “Data Dump”
Too often we see a “fear of missing out” (FOMO) mentality drive a “we must capture everything” policy. All this results in is a mass of data that somebody has to analyze after the meeting. Too often a 300+ page data dump report (when it finally is produced) ends up sitting on the metaphorical shelf.
Focus on Key Questions
Prior to a major medical or scientific meeting it’s important to develop a list of the key questions that a brand, commercial or new products team need answered. The questions could be on competitor activity, developments in a pathway or impact of clinical data on the standard of care. Data collection can then be focusoned on answering those key questions.
Insights cost more
Recently, staff at a top 20 pharma company told us they were paying $X for a conference “data dump” but only had 10% of $X available for strategic insights. In Twitter speak, they had #LostThePlot as it should be the other way round since insights are more valuable than raw data.
As management consultants, we might produce a Powerpoint slide with a table or chart based on data from 20 posters. In order to select those 20 key posters, we could have reviewed perhaps 200 posters originally. Which would you rather have, one slide with insights and analysis or 200 Powerpoint slides with data? Our philosophy is “less is more.”
Insights cost more because it takes in-depth therapeutic area knowledge and expertise to condense data into a meaningful story and make strategic recommendations.
What is your conference coverage strategy for this year? Please contact us if you would like to learn more about our capabilities.
The prostate cancer market is dynamic, with a lot of news happening. One of the many new treatments in development worth watching is custirsen (OGX-011).
Sally Church on Pharma Strategy Blog recently wrote about Custirsen from OncoGeneX. This drug inhibits the production of clusterin, a protein associated with the development of treatment resistance. As Sally notes it is in essence a “chemo enhancer.”
Photo: OncoGeneX
Phase 3 trials with custirsen are currently underway in castrate resistant prostate cancer patients receiving docetaxel in the first and second line setting.
The potential to improve the efficacy of docetaxel may be of commercial interest as more generic versions become available. According to IMS Health, sales of generic and branded docetaxel were approximately $1.1 billion for the year from June 2010 to June 2011.
This week Sandoz entered the market with their announcement of the FDA approval and launch of their generic version of Taxotere®.
It will be interesting to see whether use of custirsen with docetaxel increases overall survival (OS) in the phase III CRPC trials, and if it does how this compares to other recently approved CRPC treatments such as Zytiga™ (abiraterone acetate).
As Sally noted in her video blog post from the annual meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA), there is also preliminary scientific data to suggest that custirsen may improve the efficacy of androgen receptor antagonists such as MDV3100 from Medivation/Astellas.
We expect there will be new data on prostate cancer new products in development at the ESMO/ECCO European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress in Stockholm in late September. The possibility of new treatment options is good news for prostate cancer patients. It is a market definitely worth watching.
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.
Pieter Droppert in a previous position worked as a Global Project Director for a phase II Alzheimer’s clinical trial program in emerging markets. He maintains an interest in this area and the new products in drug development.
In a new post on Biotech Strategy Blog, Pieter writes about research published in the journal Neurology that showed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) could detect pre-symptomatic Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
Brad Dickerson and colleagues from Mass General and Rush University in Chicago looked at two groups of subjects who were cognitively normal, and then over time investigated the brain differences seen in those patients who developed AD.
Their conclusion is that changes in cortical thickness are a biomarker for AD, in other words structural brain changes can be seen before they develop clinical symptoms.
This research is still very early and has a number of limitations, including the low sample size and the need for computer power to do the analysis.
That said, the promise of all the biomarkers under development to diagnose early stage AD, whether they be amyloid imaging of plaque through PET scans or via MRI, is they offer the hope of being able to detect those patients at risk before the brain becomes irreparable.
By the time clinical symptoms of dementia or mild cognitive impairment manifests itself, then it’s likely the damage has already been done, and the brain has been snagged or disrupted by the disease in a way that is hard to reverse.
Early detection of those individuals at risk allows the prospect of using neuroprotective drugs to delay the onset of clinical symptoms.
Recognition of the importance of preclinical diagnosis i.e. before symptoms develop was also shown by the announcement yesterday by the National Institute on Aging, a branch of the NIH – National Institutes on Health of new diagnostic guidelines for Alzheimer’s patients.
These guidelines divide patients into three diagnostic groups: preclinical, mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia. The preclinical group is completely new and a recognition that structural and molecular changes occur in the brain before clinical symptoms manifest themselves.
There is considerable research into AD biomarkers to suggest that in the next 5 years we will be able to detect those people at risk, but the challenge remains in developing new drugs that slow down or reverse the onset of the neuronal tangling that occurs.
AD is a disease that will touch many families as the population in many countries becomes older. If you are interested in this area, you can read more on Biotech Strategy Blog.
Many European doctors enjoy a glass of good wine, so Bertrand Tombal’s metaphor that 2010 was a great year for advanced prostate cancer drugs was well received at the recent European Association of Urology Congress in Vienna.
Sally Church attended the meeting, and shared her thoughts on “the changing face of advanced prostate cancer” in a post on Pharma Strategy Blog.
According to Sally, one of the highlights of the meeting was the plenary presentation by Professor Johann de Bono of the Royal Marsden in the UK who discussed the new products that now exist or will soon be available for advanced prostate cancer.
Professor de Bono described how we now know more about Prostate Cancer and the fact that androgen receptor signaling remains active in advanced prostate cancer. Hormone therapy now works after chemotherapy, so the use of the term metastatic hormone refractory mHRPC is no longer valid.
He predicted that the we can expect the prostate cancer field to change in the next few years as we learn more about the molecular aspects of the disease and are better able to stratify patients.
With new products such as abiraterone, MDV3100 on the horizon and recent approvals for cabazitaxel, sipuleucel-T, multiple lines of treatment will be available to patients. The challenge according to Professor de Bono will be how to sequence them.
Further news on new product development in prostate cancer can be expected at AUA, ASCO and ESMO. With approval for abiraterone expected later this year, 2011 may be a Grand Cru year too! You can keep track of the latest developments in this market on Pharma Strategy Blog.
At Icarus Consultants we do projects on a wide range of therapeutic areas, although we are perhaps most well known for our expertise in oncology, hematology and targeted therapies.
Pieter Droppert who writes the Biotech Strategy Blog has a series of posts on the osteoporosis market. The latest discusses targeting sclerostin. Other posts discuss emerging drugs in development, and cathepsin-K inhibitors.
While at Quintiles, Pieter worked on the phase III clinical trials for risedronate. However, his interest in bone metabolism goes back to a review on “The Effects of Microgravity on the Skeletal System” that he wrote while completing his masters degree in physiology.
If you are interested in bringing new products to market for osteoporosis or wish to discuss the competitive dynamics within this market, please contact us.
Following on from Sally Church’s recent blog post comparing cancer research to cricket, today on Pharma Strategy Blog she uses Michael Jordan’s approach to basketball as a metaphor to discuss the secrets of success in cancer research.
Sally proposes the following formula:
Driver Mutation + Adaptive Pathway + Ligand + Patient Selection = Possible Success
To understand more about what this means, you can read Sally’s blog post here.