How This Manufacturer Turned Big Pharma’s Commercialization Model Upside Down

When Pfizer
PFE
(NYSE: PFE) acquired Biohaven Pharmaceutical Holding Company Ltd., the maker of a portfolio of calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) receptor antagonists such as Nurtec ODT (rimegepant), for $11.6 billion, many big Pharma executives began to question their own beliefs and commercial tactics. To readapt Pharma’s mindset toward a commercialization model of the future requires a team of outside the box thinkers, who instead of accepting the status quo, are willing to push the limit of traditional methods in order to maximize the benefit delivered to both patients and health-care providers (HCPs). Vlad Coric, MD, Biohaven’s CEO throughout the Pfizer acquisition, assembled a team of like-minded executives and team-members who were always willing to compliantly question the status quo, while not taking ‘no’ for an answer.

Creating therapeutic treatment options for patients with underlying brain disease and finding the most efficient ways to deliver these treatments to patients has been an inevitable path for Coric since childhood. As the son of two immigrant clinicians, a psychiatrist and a pharmacist, Coric grew up on the grounds of a large psychiatric hospital, heavily exposed to patients with severe underlying brain disease. At a young age, Coric was fascinated with understanding the neurobiology of these diseases, unencumbered by any stigmas associated with these neurologic disorders. After receiving his post-graduate medical training at Yale University where he was mentored by some of the leading neurologists and neuropsychiatrists, Coric joined Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY). “I leave my academic career at Yale to learn drug development at Bristol in order to build new treatment options for brain disorders and what happens? Many of the top Pharma companies including Bristol exit neuroscience research because it’s too hard,” says Coric.

While many of the top Pharma companies decided to exit the field neuroscience, Coric remained true to his mission to bring revolutionary neurologic treatment options to life. “When you go out and meet with investors who are reading headlines about how many of the top Pharma companies are exiting the brain disorder field, it can be jarring. Probably 200 investors said no to me when it came to an investment in Biohaven,” says Coric. Even though he and his wife were overburdened with med student loans while raising four kids, Coric remained determined to find an investor who shared his belief in Biohaven’s mission. Coric finally connected with an investor willing to listen, but instead of pitching at an office, he pitched Biohaven’s vision at an airport in Connecticut. Fortunately for this investor, who made over $300 million who exited at the IPO, Coric sold them 50% of the company for a $3.5 million investment.

Coric’s uphill battle continued with Biohaven’s first asset, Nurtec. “The same naysayers around brain disorder research were the same naysayers in the migraine space. I’d hear ‘patients are satisfied with Triptans, you don’t need a CGRP agent’…even fallacies about how ‘there are only four CGRP monoclonal antibodies and people will not take an oral over an injectable,’” says Coric. Ultimately, Coric and his team’s determination led them to continue to question the status quo, even in the face of skepticism. In fact, when the time came for Nurtec’s commercial launch in 2020, Coric challenged the traditional methodologies surrounding a drug’s commercial launch, emphasizing how behind many traditional Pharma companies are in their tactics and digital strategies.

“It’s interesting how Pharma is so willing to innovate and take risk on the development of new drugs, yet is unwilling to take risk and innovate when it comes to drug commercialization,” says Coric. Coric and BJ Jones, Biohaven’s former Chief Commercial Officer who recently joined NewAmsterdam Pharma, turned the commercial model upside down.

“At the time of Nurtec’s commercial launch, we were not only facing competitors with much larger budgets, but we launched at the start of Covid,” says Jones. Limitations in traditional Pharma commercialization methods include physical constraints: pharma field reps facing limitations in the number of HCPs they can visit, and one-size fits all direct-to-consumer (D2C) ads that do not personalize or engage the target patient population.

“Why isn’t Pharma using technology to better transfer information to patients and doctors? Why aren’t digital technologies being used to synchronously and asynchronously educate doctors? Why isn’t Pharma using social media correctly to launch drugs? Why isn’t technology being used to help focus launch efforts?” asks Coric.

Instead of spending the first 6 months relying on a salesforce to first target HCPs before launching D2C campaigns, Biohaven took the opposite approach of launching their D2C and direct-to-doctor (D2D) digital campaigns, letting the patient also serve as an educational resource to the HCP. In fact, Biohaven used a combination of macro influencers, such as Khloe Kardashian, and micro influencers to better communicate with certain patient segments about Nurtec as a treatment option. The company even leveraged meme-related tactics, which while commonly used in consumer are not traditionally used in Pharma. At point of awareness, they leveraged a variety of HCP and patient engagement technologies typically used within the realm of consumer to engage and gather insight on effective tactics.

Biohaven relied heavily on consumer-style tactics such as agile marketing methodologies, and technologies readapted for Pharma to build the commercialization model of the future: “Speed to patient is everything. We combined new and innovative tactics with tried and true methods of engagement to expedite the time it takes to get a product in the hands of patients. We had a digital and social-first strategy due to launching in the midst of Covid. This allowed us to be more effective by pivoting and shifting commercial tactics. We took informed risk to digitally engage patients and doctors,” says Jones.

“By taking a digital-first commercialization approach, we were better prepared than our competitors such as Abbvie’s Ubrelvy. In fact, our whole organization was built around virtual,” says Coric. The irony is Coric faced a number of challenges with traditional Pharma technology vendors: “I could not get any of these mature commercialization companies to even get me a dashboard where I could look at prescriptions, office visits, and other important metrics to understand and have more insight into the tactics which were working,” says Coric.

Coric and Jones continuously emphasized to their team that they need to be quicker and smarter in order to beat competitors who have significantly greater levels of capital and human resources. “We always have to be one step ahead of our competitors. When they copy us, we have to pivot and always remain steps ahead in our approach. This is what gives us a competitive commercial edge,” says Coric.

As a physician, clinician, academic researcher, and drug developer, Coric took the time to understand all aspects of the commercial life-cycle to deliver a best in-class experience to HCPs and patients. While innovative technologies and strategies are critical to driving a commercial model of the future, Coric and Jones credit the team they assembled in helping the company outperform competitors and exceed market expectations.

“You question the status quo and you come up with new ways for how things should be done without buying into the mantra of how everything has happened,” says Coric.