Horizon Therapeutics CEO Tim Walbert fronts the pharma company’s new “It’s Personal” corporate brand campaign.
Horizon Therapeutics CEO Tim Walbert runs a rare disease company, but he’s also a patient. While his condition hasn’t been a secret, Walbert is stepping out for the first time as the face of rare disease in Horizon’s new corporate campaign called ‘It’s Personal.’
Or rather, as one of the faces of rare disease — other Horizon employees will also share their stories as patients and caregivers as part of the effort.
Walbert is familiar with the typical long path of rare disease patients. He was first diagnosed as a junior in college with an autoimmune disease similar to rheumatoid arthritis, but he spent another 10 years before receiving a second rare disease diagnosis. More recently, he unfortunately added the role of caregiver to a child with a rare disease when his 13-year-old son was diagnosed last year with two autoimmune conditions.
Walbert joined Horizon as CEO in 2008 after working at Abbott — now AbbVie — in immunology on the launch of anti-inflammatory biologic Humira. Before that he worked at Searle, now part of Pfizer, on pain med Celebrex. The then-fledging Horizon had only a handful of employees and no office space, literally working from Walbert’s living room.
Lately though, Horizon’s been on a tear. Despite a pair of major setbacks with the pandemic closing infusion centers just weeks after its key Tepezza thyroid eye disease approval and then later when Catalent cancelled Tepezza manufacturing slots to prioritize Covid-19 vaccine production, the company reported $820 million in Tepezza sales in 2020. That accounted for about 40% of the pharma’s record $2.2 billion in 2020 sales, blasting past $1.3 billion in 2019 sales.
While ‘It’s Personal’ is Horizon’s first corporate branding effort, the growing pharma company has long relied on direct-to-consumer advertising as a key part of its commercialization strategy. It’s also invested heavily in unbranded awareness campaigns including RareIs which began as a social media awareness campaign that’s evolved into a rare disease resource and support community platform.
Walbert recently talked to Endpoints MarketingRx senior editor Beth Snyder Bulik about Horizon’s new campaign, and the rare personal journey that’s helped steer his career.
How did the new ‘It’s Personal’ campaign come about? Can you talk about your personal connection and why you wanted to do it?
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Australia’s Avance Clinical: no IND required and a 43.5% rebate on clinical spend for CGT biotechs
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The cell and gene therapies (CGT) sector offers unprecedented opportunities for patient disease management across virtually all therapeutic areas. However, finding the right accredited clinical teams to take a therapy through to the clinic and manage the regulatory process can be a major challenge for biotechs with a CGT product.
Joan Perelló, Sanifit CEO
Joan Perelló beat all the odds with his little Spanish biotech startup Sanifit.
Working on the far perimeter of the big US/European drug development scene, he took a drug born out of his PhD work and got enough seed cash to get started. That’s one near miracle. In the second near miracle he gathered a previously unheard of venture raise in Spain — helping build an industry ecosystem from scratch — to pursue a successful search for solid human data for his drug, SNF472. And while gathering a virtual team of developers from Europe and the US, the CEO/co-founder steered it into the late-stage arena.
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MSNBC journalist Tiffany Cross hosting a Hologic roundtable with experts and advocates to discuss Black women and uterine fibroids.
Hologic is encouraging Black women and their advocates to ‘get loud to get care’ when it comes to uterine fibroids. The medtech company’s new campaign ‘Unmuting Fibroids’ shines a light on the gynecological health problem that disproportionately affects Black women.
Along with longtime partner The Black Women’s Health Imperative (BWHI), Hologic kicked off the effort with a roundtable discussion that included physicians, legislators, advocates, faith leaders and celebrities with connections to fibroids. MSNBC reporter Tiffany Cross, who recently had fibroid surgery, hosted the discussion about personal experiences, the need for research, treatments and the underlying medical issue.
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Most people know if they’re ‘Team Pfizer’ or ‘Team Moderna,’ but few know if they got the Comirnaty or Spikevax Covid-19 vaccine. Those are the brand names of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, respectively, however they have yet to take hold with consumers, media or even medical professionals.
And there are others. Covid vaccine brand names also include AstraZeneca’s Vaxzevria, Novovax’s Nuvaxovid, and Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline’s Vidprevtyn. J&J’s Janssen-developed Covid vaccine is the lone major holdout and is still yet to be named, if ever. In EMA filings approving its conditional use, the brand name is listed simply as ‘Covid-19 Vaccine Janssen.’
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Bill Martin, Global Head of Neuroscience for R&D, Janssen
J&J’s Janssen neuroscience division has been a solid revenue contributor focused mostly on psychiatric drugs — but now its portfolio is headed for a change.
Bill Martin, Janssen’s global head of neuroscience for research and development now for 18 months, is looking to build out precision products as neuroscience ‘enters a golden age.’
The pharma is now ‘expanding our commercial portfolio beyond psychiatry and introducing new therapies across neurological neurodegenerative and autoantibody driven diseases,’ he said in an interview with Endpoints MarketingRx.
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If both its BioNTech-partnered Covid-19 vaccine and in-house antiviral live up to their full promises, Pfizer may be sitting on a $100 billion goldmine in 2022.
That’s according to SVB Leerink analyst Geoffrey Porges, who released his latest forecast early Tuesday complete with a lengthy breakdown of all the intricate factors going into his calculation. Bottom line: universal boosting and pediatric recommendations will shore up global Covid vaccine sales to $59 billion in 2021 and $48 billion in 2022, or $107 billion in cumulative sales.
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Neil Desai, Aadi Bioscience CEO (via YouTube)
The FDA on Tuesday approved Aadi Bioscience’s first drug and the first treatment approved specifically for patients with an ultra-rare and aggressive form of sarcoma that occurs mostly in women.
The approval of the drug, known as Fyarro, is for those with locally advanced unresectable or metastatic malignant perivascular epithelioid cell tumor (PEComa), and is based on a Phase II trial.
Results showed an overall response rate as assessed by independent review of 39% (12/31), with two patients achieving a complete response after prolonged follow up, Aadi said. The company also said that among responders, 92% had a response lasting greater than or equal to six months; 67% had a response lasting greater than or equal to 12 months; and 58% had a response lasting greater than or equal to two years.
Emma Walmsley, GlaxoSmithKline CEO (Fang Zhe/Xinhua/Alamy Live News)
As activist investors champ at the bit for change at drug giant GlaxoSmithKline, the pharma giant has turned over many rocks to find an R&D success to present to its detractors. In NASH, a field strewn with failures, GSK hopes a new license deal can churn out a much-needed winner.
GSK will pay $120 million in upfront cash and $910 million in downstream milestones to develop and sell ARO-HSD, Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals’ RNA interference drug targeting fatty liver disease nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), the companies said Monday.
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Supply chain issues and an inspection backlog have hindered manufacturing’s seemingly endless boom, following an influx of money. But a new threat looms over the industry: a strain of Windows malware.
BIO-ISAC, an international organization that addresses threats to the bio economy, issued the warning on its website Monday, saying that a ‘large biomanufacturing facility’ was involved in an attack in spring 2021, and the same malware was noticed at a second facility in October 2021. The organization expedited the threat advisory in the public’s interest and has issued a statement to manufacturers: Assume that you are a target, and review security protocol accordingly.
https://endpts.com/marketingrx-qa-horizon-ceo-tim-walbert-goes-from-c-suite-to-face-of-the-brand/
