Oracle tool uncovers changes in the oncology drug market

Traditionally, only a small proportion of oncology drugs make it from phase 1 to commercialization. And biopharmaceutical companies continue to face significant challenges in understanding how new oncology drug approvals impact treatment patterns and market share. To address such hurdles, Oracle recently launched CancerMPact Treatment Architecture Trends (PDF overview here), a resource that aims to address this issue by providing a cloud-based service that analyzes historical and global cancer treatment data.

In this following Q&A session, Chris Boone, Ph.D., GVP of Research Services at Oracle Life Sciences, explains how the tool helps companies visualize drug uptake over time, develop go-to-market strategies, prescribing behavior of physicians and identify unmet medications Capture medical needs and access valuable outcomes data to improve strategic planning in oncology. In the interview, he shares how the tool can provide important insights into evolving treatment paradigms, such as rapidly switching from crizotinib to alectinib, and how this information can be used to accelerate the development of more effective cancer therapies.

Can you talk more about how the CancerMPact Treatment Architecture Trends specifically help biopharma companies quantify the impact of new drug approvals?

Chris Boone, Ph.D.

Boone: Drug approvals are a key driver of market share in oncology, and it is complex to accurately predict how past and current approvals may impact the market. CancerMPact Treatment Architecture Trends helps address this issue by providing a robust analytical framework that allows companies to visualize how past medication adherence has evolved over time. It provides insights into how different types of physicians and in different treatment settings have historically introduced new treatments when they were available. By analyzing historical and current data, the tool allows companies to look at analogous situations that can shed light on how future drug approvals will change treatment paradigms, giving them a clearer understanding of potential impact on market share.

Can you provide a specific example of how a pharmaceutical company could use the historical data within Treatment Architecture Trends to develop a go-to-market strategy for a new oncology drug?

Boone: Understanding standard of care (SoC) evolution is critical to designing an effective go-to-market strategy. By leveraging historical data from Treatment Architecture Trends, pharmaceutical companies can assess how past drug introductions have changed treatment patterns across different lines of therapy and apply these insights to their current situation. A prime example is the rapid replacement of crizotinib with alectinib in the first-line treatment of ALK+ non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in 2017-2018 as a result of alectinib approval. This event highlights not only how quickly the SoC can change, but also the differences in adoption, duration of therapy, and top market share between regions, such as the US and Japan. Additionally, treatment architecture trends help determine which specialists have prescribed specific therapies, for example when comparing the use of hormonal treatments (such as abiraterone vs. enzalutamide), which may differ between urologists and oncologists. These insights allow companies to refine their marketing, targeting and rollout strategies for greater impact.

How can CancerMPact treatment architecture trends be leveraged beyond market analysis and strategic planning to improve patient outcomes or accelerate drug development?

Boone: Treatment Architecture Trends' strength lies in its ability to provide rapid and contextual market analysis while allowing companies to pressure test insights across different tumor types and geographies. By understanding how new therapies have been adopted into clinical practice, companies can better anticipate analogous changes in future treatments. In addition, the tool enables the assessment of unmet needs and gaps in existing treatment plans based on an analysis of the historical use of chemotherapy, immunotherapy and targeted therapies – which in turn can serve as the basis for drug development plans in biopharmaceutical companies to advance drug development in these areas in turn would improve patient outcomes.

Can you elaborate on the “outcomes data” that Treatment Architecture Trends provides?

Boone: Treatment Architecture Trends provides outcome data, including physician-reported response rates and disease progression across different lines of therapy. These metrics provide biopharma companies with valuable insight into how all patients are performing in real-world settings and the impact on long-term patient outcomes. Key indicators such as overall response rate (including complete and partial response rates) and progression-free survival (PFS) across all therapies provide important insight into how well a drug extends survival or delays disease progression. In addition, the data allow analysis of the proportion of patients in each line of therapy who receive further treatment compared to those who do not receive further treatment due to death, long-term response or no further treatment. And for early-stage disease, metrics such as duration of response and type of recurrence (local or metastatic) provide companies with a deeper understanding of changing outcome dynamics.

Filed Under: Clinical Trials, Drug Development, Machine Learning and AI, Oncology
Tagged with: Biopharma Analytics, CancerMPact, Drug Uptake, Market Share, Oncology Strategies, Patient Outcomes, Treatment Trends