Posts tagged ‘Pharma Marketing Consulting’
ASH 2011 Poster Session
Two Bruton’s Tyrosine Kinase (BTK) inhibitors in clinical development (PCI-32765 & AVL-292) generated a lot of interest at the recent American Society of Hematology (ASH) annual meeting in San Diego.
Sally Church on Pharma Strategy Blog has been following BTK as a novel drug development target, and saw its potential in early data presented at ASH 2010 and ASCO 2011.
Bruton’s Tyrosine Kinase is a critical kinase for lymphoma cell survival and proliferation. It plays an important role in B-lymphocyte development, differentiation and signaling. As Sally noted on Pharma Strategy Blog:
“It is a critical part of the BCL pathway that leads to cell proliferation, so targeting it leads to cell death or apoptosis.”
Sally’s insightful blog post goes into more detail on the Bruton’s Tyrosine Kinase clinical data presented at ASH by Dr Susan O’Brien (MD Anderson Cancer Center).
A number of companies are now taking an interest in BTK inhibition. Johnson & Johnson announced a $1B licensing deal for PCI-32765 just prior to the meeting. Sally’s analysis of this was:
“Based on the data seen over the last two years, I thought they got a steal”
BTK inhibition looks to be a promising target for B-cell malignancies such as non-hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL), mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) & chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). This is good news for patients.
BTK inhibitors are a new class of targeted therapies that we can expect to hear more about in the future.
Icarus Consultants’ social media and oncology expert, Sally Church, is also into business productivity.
At the many cancer conferences she attends each year such as ASCO, ASH, AACR and the forthcoming ESMO/ECCO/ESTRO meeting in Stockholm, an iPad is now Sally’s preferred choice of device to travel with.
How does Sally use an iPad to cover these medical conferences?
In an informative post on Pharma Strategy Blog, Sally outlines the apps that she uses and how they improve her productivity! Anyone who has seen Sally at a conference knows she covers a lot of ground – quite literally in the case of the miles that one walks at ASCO!
What is Sally’s favorite app?
Try the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) quarterly bulletin, that according to Sally is “a truly beautiful combination of art and science that is a pleasure to read.”
You can read more on Pharma Strategy Blog on how to use an iPad for improved productivity in science, medicine and the pharma industry.
I’ll be asking for one for Xmas this year too!
Late last friday afternoon, Pfizer received FDA approval for Xalkori® (crizotinib) in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The companion diagnostic test from Abbott was approved at the same time. Sally Church on Pharma Strategy Blog has written about the Xalkori approval and the “wonderful news” this represents for those affected by this disease.
Sally notes that the Xalkori® story “represents another major advance for targeted therapy in a clearly defined subset of patients.” The cost of treatment is $9,600 per month. In addition there will be the cost of screening the majority of NSCLC patients who do not have an abnormal anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene. “ALK aberrations typically occur in the order of 4-7% of NSCLC patients.”
Sally in her informative Pharma Strategy Blog post also shares the story from Dr Jack West in Seattle of one patient who has been on the drug for 2 years and is now coaching soccer!
Post Glivec/Gleevec, which Sally helped bring to market while at Novartis Oncology, it’s good to see two new highly targeted therapies that will have a major impact on the lives of patients.
Not withstanding the excellent results, it remains to be seen whether the high price of recently approved oncology drugs such as Zelboraf, Adcetris and Xalkori represents a sustainable business model in the long-run. Drug companies argue that how society spends its healthcare dollars is a matter of public policy and choice by the taxpayers, rather than an issue of how they choose to price their products.
As Pieter Droppert noted on Biotech Strategy Blog last week while writing about the Google/Department of Justice Settlement, many prescription drugs are cheaper in Canada than in the United States. Is it inevitable that the continued rise in the price of oncology drugs in the United States will eventually force some form of price regulation or costing model based on performance metrics such as Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALY)?
In the meantime, the Xalkori approval is one that Pfizer can be proud of. Despite all that’s been said about the lack of innovation in the pharmaceutical industry, it’s an example of how knowledge of the underlying biology and mechanism of action of a disease can be leveraged in drug development. The result is a new product brought to market within a relatively short period of time.
In addition to Sally Church’s recent post on Pharma Strategy Blog about the crizotinib FDA approval, she previously posted an excellent interview with Dr Ross Camidge on “crizotinb and ALK rearrangements in lung cancer.“ This is well worth reading if you missed it the first time.
Pieter Droppert has prepared a short (2 minute) video review of BIO 2011, in which he notes that one of the major themes of the meeting was facilitating partnering, licensing & business development discussions between pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.
Astra Zeneca tweeted that they had 500 partnering discussions planned, a number that is perhaps not so surprising in light of their pipeline and patent cliff over the next few years.
Another major focus of BIO was the marketing of biotechnology regions that takes place in the exhibit hall and at satellite events. Pieter has written in more detail on Biotech Strategy Blog about the session on innovation he attended, networking opportunities and the face of biotech social media.
His not too serious BIO 2011 video, that you can watch below, captures what he thought of the meeting as a first-time attendee.
We wish our Canadian clients a Happy Canada Day today and our United States clients an enjoyable Independence Day weekend. Icarus Consultants will be open for business again on Tuesday, July 5th.
Photo Credit: Nimesh Madhaven
This Friday sees the start of the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago. The meeting runs from June 3-7.
On Pharma Strategy Blog, Sally Church shares her thoughts on what she expects to be hot news at ASCO this year.
In her ASCO11 video preview Sally discusses clinical trial presentations in ovarian cancer, metastatic melanoma and soft tissue sarcoma. You can watch Sally’s video below and read more on Pharma Strategy Blog.
Icarus Consultants will be attending ASCO (along with 30,000 others), so if you are interested in meeting up, please contact us.
Icarus Consultants will be attending the annual meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA) that starts in Washington DC this weekend.
On Biotech Strategy Blog, Pieter Droppert has written about the independent satellite symposia he will be attending. These are not officially part of the AUA meeting, but associated with it.
One of the symposia is on managing skeletal-related events in patients with prostate cancer. In his blog post, Pieter discusses some of the unanswered questions around this topic such as the impact on Quality of Life (QoL) in patients with bone-metastatic castrate resistant prostate cancer (CRPC).
You can read more about which AUA satellite symposia Pieter will be attending and what information and insight he hopes to obtain from them on Biotech Strategy Blog.
News from ARVO 2011 annual meeting including Lucentis v Avastin in age-related macular degeneration
May 6th, 2011
Daedalus
Pieter Droppert recently attended the annual meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) in Fort Lauderdale.
Earlier in his career, Pieter worked in ophthalmology with Alcon Labs on European clinical trials for novel intra-ocular lenses. He helped bring AcrySof® to market.
Hot news at this year’s ARVO was a discussion on the data published in the New England Journal of Medicine comparing FDA approved Lucentis® to off-label Avastin® in age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
If you are interested in the ophthalmology market or news from ARVO, Pieter has recently written a number of posts on Biotech Strategy Blog that are worth checking out:
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.
Pieter Droppert quoted in LA Times Story on US Supreme Court Pharma Marketing & Data Mining case
April 28th, 2011
Daedalus
It is always a pleasure to be recognized by others. Pieter Droppert’s writing on Biotech Strategy Blog was recently quoted by the Los Angeles Times, alongside Pharmalot’s Ed Silverman, in a story about the Sorrell v. IMS Health case heard by the United States Supreme Court earlier this week.
Pieter is a 2005 graduate of Rutgers School of Law-Newark and recalls that the constitutional theory class he did was one of the most demanding! His post on Biotech Strategy Blog earlier this year, “US Supreme Court to decide whether Vermont can control the use of prescribing data by IMS Health and Pharma companies” was also linked to by the Cornell University Law School Legal Information Institute.
The attempt by the State of Vermont to regulate the use of pharmacy prescribing data and restrict its use for pharmaceutical marketing and sales is something that Pieter has followed on Biotech Strategy Blog. Earlier this week he wrote a preview on the Supreme Court oral argument in Sorrell v. IMS Health and what he thought the Justices would focus on.
His analysis of Tuesday’s oral argument that focused on First Amendment rights and commercial free speech, is that Vermont appear unlikely to prevail and that the law restricting access by data mining companies such as IMS Health will not be upheld.
This is good news for the U.S. pharmaceutical industry that is facing increasing challenges in obtaining access to physicians for sales and marketing.
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.