Personalized Medicine: Our Industry’s Next Great Leap Forward Marketing Personalized medicine will drive medicine to become much more of a science than an art. And with that change, there will be many necessary fundamental changes to how our industry markets these innovations. Richard T. Minoff President Recently I walked around our agency and asked a broad range of people what the one most significant medical advance had been since they were born. The responses were even more varied than I would have thought. Some responses were driven by personal circumstances, while others were stimulated by an intellectual curiosity for the one right answer: polio vaccine, organ transplantation, CT scan, oral contraception, cancer drugs, coronary artery stenting, pulse oximetry, molecular targeted therapies, and virtual diagnostic screening were just a few that were mentioned. And then someone mentioned our work on Genitope’s MyVax, a Phase III personalized immunotherapy that will bring to life the very real promise of personalized medicine. On the Brink of the Next Leap Forward The industry is on the brink of the next great leap forward in medicine at a time when it desperately needs to show its value. While most people have heard about the human genome and pharmacogenomics, very few are likely to have a real grasp or understanding of the impact that these will have on medicine and life. The medical revolution that is taking place illustrates that biotechnology is no longer just a great idea, but it is being harnessed and its energy is funneling a new path forward for medicine. But how prepared are the companies, the commercialization teams, and the marketers to deal with what many still view as medicines that are a decade or more away? And how many are still focused on the “big bang” therapies with the hope of creating the next global billion-dollar blockbuster? In talking to many colleagues and associates on both sides of the table, I would suggest that the answer is still too many, and too few seem prepared for the personalized medicine train that has already left the station. In the very near future, using the scientific discoveries that will correlate human-disease factors with the individual gene architecture, physicians will be able to prescribe the right drug, at the right dose, at the right time, for the right patient based on his or her unique DNA. Think about some of the benefits: patients will only get the therapy/treatment that has the highest likelihood of success; the healthcare system (and patients) will likely be spared significant cost, provided the interventions are priced appropriately; genetic testing/diagnostics (i.e., HER-2 receptor diagnostics) will ensure that patients and their families can plan real preventative care and/or treatment (i.e., Herceptin) that is appropriate; and better patient outcomes, often driven by significantly increased compliance and adherence, will replace the often “hit or miss” approach to therapy. More Science Than Art Personalized medicine will drive medicine to become much more of a science than an art. And with that change, there will be many necessary fundamental changes to how our industry markets these innovations. As personalized medicine takes hold, it will bring to an end the days of the mega salesforce coupled with big spend advertising, promotion, and sampling programs. These changes will take time, especially since most of the early personalized medicine initiatives will be specialty-focused. But the smart commercialization teams and marketers already are planning for these changes and developing strategic partnerships with the organizations that can really help them today and tomorrow. The Time is Now Already I am hearing that familiar ring: What’s the rush? For the late majority and slow adopters that will be passed by, there will always be time. And while I’d generally agree that much of what we do today, such as core brand development processes and premarket conditioning programs, to launch a brand will apply, there are many critical nuances to developing and marketing a brand in the evolving personalized medicine market. Personalized medicine requires a much stronger science orientation, as well as discussions, very early on, with thought leaders and the various stakeholders who will impact brand commercialization. Not surprisingly, optimizing these new brand assets will require staff with different skills than exist in either the current agency or client world. Today’s marketers are not well-suited to become tomorrow’s key players unless they learn to move away from the current marketing model. The required skill set will be at a very high premium, particularly given the high-science orientation, intimate knowledge of such areas as supply-chain management, patient reimbursement, and health outcomes, combined with certain necessary personal attributes (i.e., inquisitiveness, ability to collaborate with multidisciplinary teams, inclusiveness, and consensus-seeking). The bottom line is that to take advantage of this new market dynamic, our industry will require talent with a different degree of multidisciplinary business acumen coupled with an unusual degree of adaptability, empathy, and critical thinking skills. Dorland Global Health Communications, a division of Dorland Global Corporation, offers a full range of communications services for its clients, which include multinational pharmaceutical companies, biotech firms, diagnostic systems and device manufacturers, and healthcare service organizations. Dorland Global Corporation has offices in Philadelphia and San Francisco. For more information, visit dorland.com. May 2005 VIEW on Biotechnology Personalized Medicine: Our Industry’s Next Great Leap Forward — So Much Promise, So Much Opportunity, So Much To Learn
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