Dive Brief:
- Industry trade association PhRMA is stepping up outreach around its new Go Boldly campaign, sponsoring an event held Wednesday in Boston that was the first in a planned national diagloue series.
- With the new campaign, PhRMA aims to shift the public's focus from drug pricing controversies to innovative science. New ad spots, for example, paint biopharma scientists as pioneering explorers pushing the boundaries of science to the limit
- Wednesday's event, titled "Through the Microscope: Examining Modern Medicine" and convened by The Atlantic, featured a keynote address from Laurie Glimcher, the head of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Executives from Eli Lilly and Biogen also spoke.
Dive Insight:
PhRMA has said it intends to spend 'tens of millions of dollars' annually on the Go Boldly campaign, which is the second high-profile marketing push launched by the trade group in recent years. Yet since late January, when the multi-year campaign was unveiled, the industry has seen another pricing controversy spark — this time involving PhRMA-member Marathon Pharmaceuticals.
Marathon set the price of an old, but newly approved, corticosteroid at $89,0000 per year after receiving approval from the Food and Drug Administration for treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Ensuing backlash on the high price led Marathon to pause its planned commercialization of the drug.
PhRMA has since announced it would review Marathon's membership in the group.
At the day-long event, hosted by The Atlantic with speakers from the healthcare and biopharma industries, Dana-Farber's Glimcher discussed "the precision medicine revolution," particularly in cancer. Specifically, she cited the use of Novartis’ blockbuster cancer drug Gleevec (imatinib) and how it has made chronic myeloid leukemia "a disease people can live with" by targeting a specific gene in cancer cells. Gleevec, though, has come under fire for its high price recently, especially in emerging markets like Colombia.
During a panel discussion, Daniel Skovronsky, Eil Lilly’s head of clinical and product development, was asked about a possible speed-up of the FDA’s drug approval processes.
"Certainly we’ve worked across industry to try to improve the ability to get drugs to patients," he said, citing progress with the FDA’s new and accelerated approval processes like the breakthrough therapy designation.
PhRMA has scheduled three more Go Boldly events in March in Washington, D.C.