Healthy Skepticism Library item: 13234

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Perry S.
The changes to come: evolutions in pharma
eyeforpharma 2008 Mar 1
http://social.eyeforpharma.com/content/pharma-strategy/changes-come-evolutions-pharma

Full text:

Malcolm Allisor, head of new products at Actelion, recently spoke to eyeforpharma about his thoughts on pharma, its evolution and its future. So what are some of the important ways in which pharma is changing?

Evolution of pharma
According to Allisor, one very important development is that pharma is starting to shift some of its focus away from major blockbuster drugs. Traditionally, companies produced therapies, which would be marketed to hundreds of thousands or millions of people; now, smaller, highly segmented therapies are looking more attractive. Ten years ago, says Allisor, such opportunities would have been viewed as too small. But now pharma companies are exploring these niche markets, particularly those drugs which would likely have a high efficacy rate but a smaller initial target population.

Biomarkers or surrogate markers are also gaining prominence in pharma research, Allisor says. Biomarkers, ways in which the efficacy of a drug can be explored before testing is conducted on patients, can significantly reduce the time and money a company spends getting a drug to market. The savings doesn’t come in the drug that makes it to the market, says Allisor, but in the drugs that don’t. Because biomarkers can indicate early on if a drug is interesting enough to pursue, using biomarkers allows pharma companies to ditch those drugs which are clearly not promising. The reduction of waste, according to Allisor, is where pharma companies will really see the benefits. The challenge of biomarkers lies in convincing regulatory bodies that these relatively new tools can act as reliable surrogates for more traditional research practices.

So what does this have to do with playing Bridge?
There are lessons to be drawn from the card game Bridge, says Allisor. Sometimes, he says, the cards we’re dealt would better suit an entirely different game. The trick is learning to play the best you can with the cards you’ve got. In Bridge, players are awarded more points for guessing correctly the number of tricks they’ll take. The best strategy isn’t always to take as many tricks as possible. The same strategy applies to the production of new therapies. If a drug may only yield benefits for 30% of the potential patients out there, does it make sense to blanket the entire market-thus wasting 70% of the prescriptions-or to find just that 30% and market the drug directly to them? It’s about being realistic, Allisor says; know the tricks you can win, and win the game to the highest level you can.

Predictions
According to Allisor, in the next five to ten years, we can expect to see large pharma companies increasingly focusing on and dominating a limited number of areas, perhaps only three to five areas. And in order to maximize capital and ROI, companies will be working together, refocusing assets in one another’s portfolios, capitalizing on those assets and using resultant capital to “acquire assets that will build on their core strengths.”

Allisor also sees greater reliance on diagnostics in pharma’s future. As medicine becomes more specialized, diagnostics will help doctors target those patients most likely to respond to new therapies. It’s necessary, Allisor says, to make diagnostics comprehensible and accessible so that doctors can use them to “rule out the 70% of patients for whom a compound has no value.” This will save the 70% of a product that is currently being wasted, but if companies are only selling 30%, there’s further discussion to be had on the issues of pricing and selling costs. However, Allisor says, in the end, this is the way the market will move.

Allisor stresses the importance of continuing to learn in order to face the coming changes and challenges. Hearing other people who may have different perspectives on the same issues allows us to see more clearly, more wholly. Says Allisor, “The moment we stop learning, we may as well pack up and go home.”