Posts tagged ‘Prostate Cancer Marketing Strategy’
The prostate cancer market continues to evolve at a fast pace. Companies with products on the market or in development will need to adapt their marketing strategy to the changing prostate cancer market dynamics. Some of the recent news includes:
MDV3100 shows 4.8 improvement in median overall survival
Sally Church, PhD on Pharma Strategy Blog interviewed David Hung, MD CEO of Medivation and discussed the MDV3100 clinical trial data presented at ASCO GU.
Sally has been following the development of MDV3100 for a while, and previously interviewed Dr Charles Sawyers one of the co-developers.
MDV3100 showed an improvement in median overall survival of 4.8 months in advanced prostate cancer, and offers a number of significant advantages over abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) due to its different mechanism of action on the androgen receptor.
One of the advantages is it’s ability to target splice variants:
You can read more about MDV3100 on Pharma Strategy Blog.
Is ARN-509 more effective than MDV3100?
Another interesting compound in prostate cancer drug development is Aragon’s ARN-509. Recent research published in the AACR journal, “Cancer Research” suggests that ARN-509 may be a more potent androgen-receptor antagonist than MDV3100.
Whether ARN-509 will make it to market remains in question given that Medivation claim the compound was part of the intellectual property it acquired from UCLA along with what became MDV3100.
You can read more about the potential of Aragon’s ARN-509 in prostate cancer on Pharma Strategy Blog.
Radium-223 (Alpharadin) significantly prolongs time to first Skeletal Related Event
Pieter Droppert has written on Biotech Strategy Blog about the radium-223 (Alpharadin) clinical trial data presented by Dr Oliver Sartor at ASCO GU.
Alpharadin is a bone targeted radiopharmaceutical that has shown not only a significant delay in the time to first skeletal related event (SRE) but an increase in overall survival.
Dr Sartor kindly offered some clinical perspective on the data that you can read on Biotech Strategy Blog.
In case you missed it, the video interview with Dr Chris Parker at ECCO/ESMO 2011 in Stockholm offers further information on radium-223 and the ALSYMPCA trial results:
Amgen fails to convince ODAC that Xgeva should have a prostate bone mets indication
If you were following the prostate cancer news this past week, then the ODAC 12:1 vote against granting an indication for denosumab (Xgeva) for the prevention of prostate cancer bone metastases was in the news
Pieter Droppert collated the Xgeva ODAC meeting tweets on Storify if you are interested in what was live tweeted during the meeting.
Once Alpharadin is approved will radiation oncologists now get more involved in the treatment of prostate cancer and how will this impact the market dynamics? Will urologists favor MDV3100 that does not require administration of prednisone at the expense of Zytiga?
Companies will need to adapt their marketing strategy as new prostate cancer new products come to market in 2012.
It’s exciting to see new products that make a difference to patients come to market. Multiple treatments improve overall survival (OS) in prostate cancer patients: docetaxel, cabazitaxel, sipuleucel-T, abiraterone acetate and now, radium-223 choloride.
The phase 3 trial results for radium 223 chloride were presented at the 2011 European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress (ESMO, ECCO, ESTRO) in Stockholm this past weekend.
Pieter Droppert has two posts on Biotech Strategy Blog from the Congress about the potentially “practice changing” Alpharadin prostate cancer data:
- Alpharadin will be a new treatment option for Prostate Cancer
- Alpharadin Prostate Cancer data will be “practice changing”
He also took the opportunity to interview Dr Chris Parker, Consultant Clinical Oncologist at The Royal Marsden Hospital, who presented the ALSYMPCA phase 3 trial results, and a video blog post will follow.
Live conference twitter board at #EMCC2011
Sally Church on Pharma Strategy Blog aggregated all the tweets from the 2011 ESMO ECCO congress in Stockholm. With only a few people tweeting, the twitter stream doesn’t report all the news, but does give a flavor of an excellent cancer meeting with a good balance of science and clinical data.
It’s an exciting time for prostate cancer patients and physicians with multiple new treatment options on the horizon. However, the fast moving and dynamic prostate cancer market is likely to present Pharma/Biotech marketing strategy professionals with opportunities and challenges. Alpharadin is on the fast track to FDA approval in 2012.
Do you have a need to understand the fast moving prostate cancer market and its competitive dynamics? If so, please contact us as we offer a number of services in support of prostate cancer marketing and new products. The team at Icarus Consultants has in-depth knowledge of this therapeutic area.
Last week, Pieter Droppert wrote on Biotech Strategy Blog about what the impact of the European approval for abiraterone acetate (Zytiga®) may be on cabazitaxel (Jevtana®) sales.
Both are indicated in the post-docetaxel setting. Will physicians prescribe a convenient pill (abiraterone) as opposed to using another line of chemo (cabazitaxel)? You can read Pieter’s thoughts on Biotech Strategy Blog.
Meanwhile on Pharma Strategy Blog, Sally Church wrote an update on pharma social media. She reviewed the Zytiga healthcare professionals website and the many features that she liked.
In another post last week, Sally discussed some of the issues surrounding the drop in share price for Dendreon and possible reasons for poor sipuleucel-T (Provenge®) sales. She also discussed new research that shows the TMPRSS2:ERG gene may be a more useful marker than PSA in prostate cancer. You can read more on Pharma Strategy Blog.
Want to understand the prostate cancer market? Contact us.
Men in the United States have a 1 in 6 chance of developing prostate cancer in their lifetime. It is, therefore, likely that we all know somebody who has been touched by the disease. To put this data in perspective, approximately 1 in 8 women in the United States will develop breast cancer.
Bone metastases are seen in 90% of men with castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). Patients may experience pain at the site of the metastases, a pain that gradually increases in intensity over time.
Sally Church on Pharma Strategy Blog has written about the experience of her father who died from Prostate Cancer, and the pain he suffered from untreated bone mets.
Source: Presentation by Dr Neil Shore at AUA 2011
In a podcast from AUA 2011 Sally interviewed Dr Neil Shore on Pharma Strategy Blog and asked him why treatment of bone metastases was important, and his views on the risks/benefits associated with denosumab. It is well worth listening to.
Dr Shore will be presenting further data on denosumab and skeletal related events (SREs) at ASCO (Abstract #4533)
The 2011 annual meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA) ended in Washington DC today.
Some of the highlights of the meeting were written about on Pharma Strategy Blog and Biotech Strategy Blog, these include:
PIVOT (Prostate Cancer Intervention versus Observation Study)
The data from this study was presented in Tuesday’s plenary session by Dr Tim Wilt, a Professor at the University of Minnesota, and was to many attendees, the highlight of the meeting.
The trial results showed for the first time that radical prostatectomy (RP) is no better than watchful waiting in men with early stage prostate cancer using evidence based medicine.
This groundbreaking research is likely to have a major impact on urology practice in the United States.
Pieter Droppert wrote about the PIVOT results on Biotech Strategy Blog. Scott Hensley on NPR’s Health Blog, “Shots” references Pieter’s post, and has an interview with Dr Wilt that is also well worth reading.
Also presented at AUA in Tuesday’s plenary session were the results from:
Denosumab (Xgeva®) 147 phase III trial
This study looked at castrate resistant prostate cancer patients at high risk of development of bone metastasis.
Sally Church on Pharma Strategy Blog discusses the results presented by Dr Matthew Smith at AUA. Denosumab was shown to increase bone metastasis-free survival and delayed time to first bone metastasis, but did not increase overall survival (OS).
Both Sally Church and Pieter Droppert also wrote additional blog posts from the meeting. On Biotech Strategy Blog, Pieter wrote about data that showed:
He also wrote about:
New Prostate Cancer products in development beyond the androgen axis
Some of the new products mentioned in Pieter’s post include alpharadin, XL-184 (cabozantinib), Prostvac-VF, BPX-101 and ipilimumab. You can read more on Biotech Strategy Blog.
Meanwhile on Pharma Strategy Blog, Sally Church continued one of her themes of how social media is impacting medical conferences by reviewing:
How AUA have embraced Social Media in 2011
Sally also recorded a video blog post (vlog) from AUA that highlighted some of the exciting developments in basic biology and how this may lead to new Prostate Cancer treatments in the future. Click here to watch this.
If you were unable to attend the meeting, Sally aggregated the #AUA2011 tweets.
Selecting what to write about on a blog is subjective, so the above posts are not intended to provide comprehensive meeting or conference coverage, only a few highlights of what was presented at the highly informative and educational AUA annual meeting.
If you are interested in a more comprehensive report on the Prostate Cancer Market and the emerging new products in development, please do not hesitate to 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.
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.
As marketing strategy consultants, it’s fascinating to watch the dynamics of a pharmaceutical market in rapid evolution.
With three new therapies for prostate cancer approved last year (cabazitaxel, denosumab, sipuleucel-T) and the approval of abiraterone acetate expected this month, the prostate cancer market is a fast changing one.
This is really good news for patients, and for a disease that effects 1 in 6 men in the United States, and is the most common non-skin cancer.
Pieter Droppert on Biotech Strategy Blog has some commentary from the recent annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) on additional new products in development that may change the landscape of this disease further.
You can read more about this on Biotech Strategy Blog.