New Personalized Medicine Model Will Lead To Quicker Pharma Profits, Better Health Care And Lower Costs, Scientia Advisors Say

Main Category: Pharma Industry / Biotech Industry
Article Date: 14 Jan 2009 - 6:00 PDT

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Despite predictions that pharma profits based on personalized medicine are still many years away, big pharmaceuctical companies could reap large, near-term revenues by pairing new diagnostic tools with existing, commercially available drugs.

So says Scientia Advisors, partner Amit Agarwal, who maintains that this new type of " life cycle management " for drugs could also improve patient care and reduce national health costs.

Writing in the current Pharmaceutical Executive, Agarwal points out that most large pharmaceutical companies focus only on the costly, long-term development of biomarkers with the goal of bringing new, targeted therapies to market-and overlook the possibility that new diagnostics could increase revenues for their existing drugs and provide better patient outcomes. He suggests that big pharma would do well to emulate smaller companies that currently market diagnostics as part of their process in pharmaceutical sales.

"Class leaders have the potential to gain great value by linking an already approved therapeutic to a diagnostic test, " Agarwal says. " Our research shows that drugs with differentiated benefits, generics, or drugs that are late-to-market can also generate considerable financial returns."

Pairing diagnostics with therapies allows companies to enhance their relationships with prescribing physicians by providing tools that can foster more effective treatment, Agarwal says. The diagnostic tools help doctors detect disease earlier, diagnose and differentiate patients likely to respond to particular therapeutics, minimize trial-and- error and adverse side effects, and monitor treatment.

In the words of Scientia's Managing Partner Harry Glorikian, "This new model results in better, more cost-effective patient care and fosters ongoing return on investment. We believe this model is key not only to promoting near-term profits for pharmaceutical companies of any size, but also to lowering costs and accelerating health care reforms."

The article includes case studies on Promethus Laboratories of San Diego, which developed a test that led to the quintupling of sales for its drug for Crohn's disease; Kos Pharmaceuticals (recently acquired by Abbott Pharmaceuticals), which greatly increased sales of a cholesterol-lowering drug by licensing and providing a new test identifying patients at risk for heart disease; and Sanochemia AG, an Austrian company that launched an MRI contrast agent allowing neurologists to definitively diagnose multiple sclerosis, evaluate disease stages, and, if indicated, more quickly migrate patients to Sanochemia's third-line MS drug.

The article, "Overlooked Opportunity: Diagnostics Allow Companies to Change the Patients, Not the Drug," is based on a Scientia study of personalized medicine. The article may be downloaded no charge.

In addition to its study of personalized medicine, Scientia has recently completed global studies on topics including: cancer diagnostics, cardiovascular devices, decentralized and point-of-care medicine; DNA microarrays and clinical diagnostics; functional foods, future healthcare/"precision medicine", infection control, musculoskeletal and orthobiologic medicine, and wound care. Study abstracts are available at http://www.scientiaadv.com, with many complete studies available upon request at no charge.

Scientia Advisors, based in Cambridge, MA and Palo Alto, CA, is a global management consulting firm specializing in strategic growth and operational strategies for major and emerging companies in health care and the life sciences.

Scientia Advisors