Pharma Strategy Blog

On simplifying messages

A few key points are much more memorable than 600 lines at 8pt font; they have more impact and illustrate your mastery of the material.

  
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New cancer treatments - promise or false hope?

The last week or so has seen some rather garish headlines in the news about cancer treatments currently undergoing testing in early clinical trials.

First up was the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, normally a staid institution renowned for good solid research, but the PR headline screamed pure sensationalism in their press release:

Mayo Researchers: Dramatic Outcomes in Prostate Cancer Study

While we all like to be positive and feel a sense of hope in our lives, what the press releases failed to mention was fair balance, namely that some patients with prostate cancer do actually see occasional stunning results with androgen ablation alone, so highlighting the 'dramatic' results of two patients on androgen therapy plus ipilimumab doesn't really tell us if the results seen were due to the androgen therapy or the ipilimumab.  Making waves about two patients does sadly not a cure make; raising false hopes in patients sick with cancer is a little tawdry at best.

The second headline that caught my eye was an email alert from the FT of all places.  In it, they were reporting about a trial from another venerable institution, the Royal Marsden in London:

New cancer treatment shows ‘great promise’

This time, the article was about AstraZeneca's PARP inhibitor, olaparib, for BRCA1 and 2 breast cancers, although the coverage did not mention that it was the drugs first clinical trial, but the hype really jars a little.  I reported on this data from ASCO in an earlier blog post.

What was interesting that the FT quoted Dr Johann De Bono as saying:

“This drug showed very impressive results in shrinking patients’ tumours. It is giving patients who have already tried many conventional treatments long periods of remission, free from the symptoms of cancer or major side-effects.”

Then I remembered he was the same doctor who constantly talked up the Cougar abiraterone trial results in prostate cancer, although it should be noted that abiraterone is part of the same family as ketoconazole, a generic anti-fungal treatment sometimes used to treat hormone sensitive prostate cancer after standard androgen therapy such as Casodex or Lupron and estrogen.  The goal of treatment is to keep men who are hormone sensitive on such therapies for as long as possible, since this keeps the disease (and PSA levels) in check.  Once they become refractory to treatment, the tumor will start proliferating and metastasize, so having new therapies added to the list to extend and prolong lives with minimal side effects is definitely a positive thing, providing the results pan out that way. 

It should be noted that breast cancer is also a disease where patients often undergo multiple lines of therapy and the data with olaparib has not yet been published in full, although a sample of the initial early results was covered in a poster at the recent ASCO meeting.  The press release was probably one of the poorest I have seen in a long while - short on the trial details and long on wild hype.

Perhaps sometimes we forget that cancer Institutions are a business in their own right.  What these centers are doing is marketing themselves and trying to attract more patients to their clinical trials rather than see community oncologists for standard treatment in the local area.  It's an ongoing battle between the two all over America, and while Europe has mainly Academic cancer centres, they all still compete with each other for patients and the flow of money, either from treatments, trials or for research dollars.  

The prize for the worse headline on this topic must surely go to Sky News, though, which is rapidly becoming the tabloid of British Television:

New Drug Is 'Holy Grail' In Cancer Fight

This headline struck my Mother so forcefully that she made a rare call to me this morning from 5,000 miles away to ask whether venerable cancer hospitals were becoming the Heroin dealers of medicine.  Ouch.

Sensationalism has no place in research and development; patients and their families deserve better than false hope being peddled so brazenly; the Mayo Clinic and Royal Marsden should know better than that.  How could they have done better while mataining their reputations? 

How about something positive, but muted, such as:

"Early but promising results seen in xxxxx cancer - more trials needed to confirm findings"

Including relevant information about the patients, inclusion and exclusion criteria and the trial design would have gone a long way to putting the information in context.  Still, what do I know?  I'm much too old school for inappropriate, tacky and racy tag lines and sound bites in the news media. 

What do you think?

Related articles by Zemanta

• 'Space Age' Cancer Drug Offers New Hope (news.sky.com)
• Health Buzz: Dramatic Prostate Cancer Findings and Other Health News (health.usnews.com)
• Some reflections on ASCO 2009 (pharmastrategyblog.com)

The next big thing online

Twitter is a great tool for all sorts of things ranging from news, information, even inspiration as this tweet this morning from Ann Curry of MSNBC shows:

The other thing that struck me early this morning was reading the commentary on my Twitter stream from the 140 Characters conference in New York.  Like many people, I've been wondering what the Next Big Thing is on the web, since there have been peaks and troughs with most platforms over the last 20 years... Usenet, bulletin boards, AOL, Yahoo!, MySpace, Facebook and now Twitter.  Most last around 5 years or so, as Steve Rubel pointed out in his talk, but what's the new trend that may emerge?  Steve, a PR professional with Edelman, suggested that it might be the Open Web with companies focusing more on building digital embassies or advocates.  There are several in the Pharma world already, as I mentioned in a previous post, but you can see similar trends at Comcast with ComcastCares and his team, Scott Monty at Ford and numerous others. 

This idea of promotors is a potentially useful corporate model, but a) what happens when the evangelists move on?  Do they take that currency with them or does it stay?  Having all-stars on your team can be both a blessing and a curse, as many sports teams will attest and b) what is the next useful tool for the masses?  How would the open web affect them?  Semantic web has been frequently suggested, but I can't really seeing this taking off.  Why?  It's a bit too nerdy and lacks emotion.  People are human, they want to connect and interact with other humans in some meaningful way that captures the imagination and emotion, as Ann Curry's quote from Maya Angelou aptly demonstrates. 

We want to feel integrated, connected and inspired, able to converse and comunicate, but we also want ease of use and convenience.

The new next big thing may not even be out there yet, it's just an idea lurking in someone's brain, waiting to happen somewhere in the world.  At the moment, I'm loving the idea of augmented reality as the post inspired by @berci yesterday shows.  For Pharma and Biotech, it has so much useful practical potential.

What's your idea for the next big thing online?

Grace and humility

Today's blog post is inspired by two wonderful ladies I met yesterday during a business visit and have known and worked with in the PR arena for 10 years.  They exemplify what real professionalism is; knowledge, experience, hard work, humour, grace and humility.  Yes, especially the last two, which are very precious and rare commodities these days.  It's akin to describing people as gentlemen and gentlewomen.

While waiting in the reception, I picked up a plain looking book with a white cover from the glass coffee table.  The first page I opened simply said:

"H U M I L I T Y"

It was a collection about humilty, truth, hard work and the like, illustrated with ethereal sculptures and spare commentary.  On checking the cover again it turned out to be a book by their PR company. 

It dawned on me that humility is what really describes the successful people in that organisation, from the top down to the polite and thoughtful receptionists.  Arrogant people don't last very long there.

I worked with these lovely ladies both as a client and a vendor or partner, and nary a cross word has ever exchanged our conversations.  It reminds me that some people can live  the concept that:

"I can forgive, extend grace, and remember the abundant blessings that have already been poured out in my life."

It's easy to think that every vendor or service company are full of themselves and what they do, and yes, there are quite a few of those out there.  But every now and then, my week is brightened by real people who do great work in a humble and unassuming way.  It's called abundance rather than scarcity mentality.  Yes, this is a tough and cynical world of ruthless competitors, but some people just exude goodness.  We need more of that in this world.

It's also partly why I hired them years ago as my PR agency of record for a major product launch without even a pitch.  You meet people, talk for 15 minutes or so, realise that you like them and get the sense they know what they're doing.  Why flap around dithering and wasting everyone's time and money with expensive pitches?  Life is too short.  Go with your gut instinct, it's usually right.  And boy, did they do a fantastic job on Gleevec.

So thank you, ladies, may you continue to brighten someone's day and keep up the great work!