Case study:
Early assessment
Development of target product profiles for early stage assets helped to focus pre-clinical efforts and investment decisions
R&D team embraced the idea of raising the bar in terms of outcomes in order to meet increasing payer needs to secure market access and realize more ambitious forecast.
Challenge
R&D developing multiple early stage assets in mature therapy area
Focus on pipeline progression driving choice of "soft" endpoints with high probability of success of showing a difference:
- Relevant to patients and physicians
- Payers challenged relevance, access challenges expected
Missing financial forecast for different development options
Actions
Partnership between commercial and R&D to develop target product profiles for different development options
Payer research to identify access prospects and directional willingness to pay for different profiles
Forecasting to value different product concepts and quantify return on investment
Result
Focus on "harder", more payer relevant endpoints resulting in:
- Higher access prospects
- Higher willingness to pay
- But: lower probability of success
- Overall, risk-adjusted return on investment higher for this option
R&D team embraced this and focuses development efforts on this option
