Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
~Dylan Thomas
- The country’s leading biopharmaceutical research companies want Americans to get to know the real men and women behind the microscopes. An industry that has historically been closed off to outsiders and non-scientific minds has launched a massive, multi-year advertising and public affairs campaign to start conversations between researchers, academia, patients and the general public about a new era in medicine.
GOBOLDLY will tell the story of innovation and advancements in medicine through the individuals driving that change—the industry scientists—but also through the patients and caregivers dealing with disease every day.
“It’s an opportunity to showcase the brains behind the breakthroughs, who are working in every facet of medicine—MS, Alzheimer’s, cancer, rare diseases, immunotherapy, ALS—the list goes on,” said Andrew Powaleny, director of Public Affairs at Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). “GOBOLDLY is an effort to highlight the incredible pace of discovery of new treatments and medicines while showcasing the minds behind that innovation—the scientists in the lab.”
Since 2000, member companies of PhRMA have invested more than half a trillion dollars in the search for new treatments and cures, including an estimated $58.8 billion in 2015 alone, Powaleny said.
Though PhRMA is a non-profit membership association that does not manufacture or market any pharmaceuticals, it represents the country’s leading pharmaceutical research and biotechnology companies, which invent new medicines and support career endeavors of scientists in drug discovery and development.
The GOBOLDLY campaign will also convene national health care dialogue, educational events and stakeholder engagements across the country.
“We’re in a perfect storm for dramatic innovation. It is a perfect storm of breaking science and unmet medical need,” said Dr. Daniel M. Skovronsky, MD, PhD. “We focus on Alzheimer’s, cancer, diabetes and autoimmune diseases to help the millions of people affected by them. Despite the high-risk nature of discovering and developing medicines, our scientists have never had a better understanding of the biology behind these diseases.”
Dr. Daniel M. Skovronsky, MD, PhD (Photo courtesy of America’s Biopharmaceutical Companies)
Skovronsky is senior vice president of Clinical and Product Development at Eli Lilly and Company responsible for developing the Lilly pipeline of molecules and speeding innovative medicines to patients. Prior to this role, he served as vice president of Tailored Therapeutics. Skovronsky also serves as Chairman of Avid Radiopharmaceuticals which he founded in late 2004. He joined Lilly in 2010 when the company acquired Avid Radiopharmaceuticals.
At Avid, Skovronsky led the discovery, development and FDA approval of Amyvid®, the first diagnostic agent for brain imaging of beta-amyloid plaques in patients with cognitive impairment being evaluated for Alzheimer's disease and other causes of cognitive decline. Skovronsky trained as a resident in pathology and completed a fellowship in neuropathology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He received his M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and did his undergraduate training in molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale University.
“We are in a golden age of science, which to me, is a great message of hope,” Skovronsky said. “Our goal is to discover and deliver medicines that change people’s expectations. We want people to say, ‘I can’t remember what my life was like before I had this medicine.’ Those are the kinds of breakthroughs we want.”
Skovronsky said scientists’ understanding of disease and cell biology has increased dramatically in the last several decades. “So because we understand biology and disease and because there is so much unmet need, the opportunities for new medicines are greater than ever before. We have gone from looking for opportunities where we can develop a new drug to having to pick through them carefully and only pick the ones that could represent real breakthroughs for patients.”
For example, he said, ever since Alzheimer’s disease was described in 1906 by German physician, Alois Alzheimer, there was only one way to know for sure that a person had it. Only after death would a pathologist be able to identify plaque sticking to brain slices. If there was no plaque, there was no Alzheimer’s disease, whether the person had memory loss or not.
“Now we are able to use molecular imaging to peer inside the brain, to see if there are amyloid plaques or neurofibrillary tangles—known as a primary marker of Alzheimer's disease—and developing specific therapies that target specific abnormalities.”
Skovronsky said because of this imaging, doctors are finding out earlier than ever when a person has or is prone to have Alzheimer’s disease. Scientists can now, through brain scanning, identify lesions that they know will lead to the disease. This makes their approaches to treatment applicable to a much larger population. “We wouldn’t have been able to do that 10 years ago. We didn’t have the tools to peer inside or the molecular understanding of the disease. Now we are doing trials in preclinical abnormalities. The best way to treat Alzheimer’s is to prevent it from ever occurring. Our goal is to make Alzheimer’s a preventable disease. When scientists all come together, it’s something we can achieve.”
This teaming of scientific minds whose life’s work has been to create treatments for disease and their willingness to learn more about the patients themselves, is what GOBOLDLY is all about. “When we all work together – universities, biotech and pharmaceutical companies – we can make great new medicines for patients,” Skovronsky said.
Powaleny said the campaign will include national TV, print, digital, radio and out-of-home advertising. The websites, GoBoldly.com and innovation.org, will provide visitors with more information about the topics and themes featured in campaign advertisements and in-depth information about advances in biopharmaceutical innovation. The metadata tag, #GOBOLDLY, will be used across social media platforms “to salute the sheer will and tenacity of patients and scientists fighting against disease every day,” he said.
Revolutionary biopharmaceutical science is the central theme of the campaign advertisements. “Do Not Go Gentle, the first TV advertisement, features the iconic poem by Dylan Thomas and highlights real biopharmaceutical scientists who have an indomitable will to find the unfindable and cure the incurable,” Powaleny said.
“Additional advertisements will be introduced throughout the year focusing on bold advancements in science and featuring the stories of real researchers who are driving these cutting-edge advances alongside patients benefiting from the medicines that are being developed,” he said.
In addition to paid advertising, the campaign will include comprehensive public affairs activities to foster a national dialogue with researchers, caregivers, patients and policymakers in forums around the country. These discussions will focus on what the new era in medicine means for patients and the health care system and the types of public policy solutions that are needed to sustain this progress.
“Through partnerships and collaborations with other health care leaders, we will work to advance commonsense solutions that foster the continued development of new medicines, enhance the private marketplace and provide patients with access to the newest and most innovative treatments,” said Stephen J. Ubl, president and chief executive officer of PhRMA. “Thanks to the tireless work of biopharmaceutical researchers and scientists, we have entered a new era of medicine that is transforming the way we prevent and treat disease. This campaign spotlights their perseverance and unwavering commitment to American patients for whom we all work. We will also be convening events with stakeholders all across the country to discuss ways we can work together to make our health care system more responsive to the needs of patients.”
The campaign will include three distinct public affairs initiatives around the following core areas: bold advancements in science, value-driven health care and public health.
Ubl said the biopharmaceutical industry is at a pivotal time in medical discovery, which has enormous potential to further revolutionize the treatment of costly and debilitating diseases like Alzheimer’s, cancer, heart disease and hepatitis C. “Our ability to harness recent scientific advances continues to accelerate and the potential benefits to patients are becoming clearer. Much of this progress is attributed to a deeper, molecular-level understanding of all different kinds of disease,” he said. “More than 7,000 medicines are in clinical development around the world right now—more than there have ever been…From 2000 to 2015, this pipeline spawned more than 550 new medicines that were approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).”
The goal with GOBOLDLY.com and Innovation.org, is to showcase as many different voices across many media formats, including interviews with reporters, national dialogue events, digital content and scientist and patient stories. Innovation.org is also a resource for greater information on breakthroughs for a given illness or disease and, most importantly, more details on various innovations in medicine. The websites work in tandem, often linking back to one another. Both sites are being refreshed regularly as well, so new content is being generated to include new scientists, new patients and new data. GoBoldly is the first stop, and Innovation takes a person into that second level of information, detail, resources and assets.
Skovronsky said citizens can always assist in the effort to find new treatments and cures by participating in clinical trials. For information, visit trials.gov. To learn more about the clinical trial process overall, visit ciscrp.org.
