Launching the first antibody-drug conjugate for Hodgkin lymphoma
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Bringing response to life
Physicians treating Hodgkin lymphoma use CAT scans at intervals to stage the disease and assess response to therapy. The hope is always to see a reduction in tumor volume. A clear scan with no evidence of disease is every patient’s and oncologist’s dream—showing that therapy has been successful and the cancer is in complete remission.
Adcetris was the first approved antibody-drug conjugate (ADC), and I was fortunate to be chief copywriter on its launch and subsequent promotion over close on three very busy years. In that time I wrote everything from prelaunch material to launch ads, sales aids, MOA video scripts, patient and nurse guides, corporate brochures, conference material, etc.
The campaign’s imagery illustrates the synthesis of effectiveness and tolerability provided by new ADC technology, depicting patients’ ability to achieve dramatic, radiologically-verifiable remission while remaining active and able to do things they enjoy.
Shaking up complacency around "the good cancer"
The treatment of Hodgkin lymphoma is a relative success story in that 90% of patients can be cured. This has led to it being described as “the good cancer.” But for the 10% with refractory disease and the 30% who relapse, prognosis is much worse, and prior to Adcetris there were few viable options for therapy.
This disease awareness advertisement sought to unseat the complacency around HL and convince physicians that patients not cured with frontline therapy needed more effective options.
Leveraging the drug's awesome technology
Each Adcetris infusion consists of thousands of tiny constructs combining a cytotoxic agent so powerful it would kill in unconjugated form, hitching a ride on an antibody that seeks out the hard-to-find, well-nigh impenetrable Reed-Sternberg tumor cells by which HL is known, getting them to subsume the seed of their destruction by stealth.
The antibody and its lethal payload are connected by a linker forged to withstand the rigors of the circulatory journey to the target, then degrade only when deep inside the tumor cell, releasing the drug in fully-potentiated form to wreak its localized havoc and destruction. I find that pretty amazing!
Building traffic at ASCO and ASH conference booths
I wish this happened more often—I had a cool little idea, and an awesome team of colleagues worked with me to give it a life of its own. We needed something to make Seattle Genetics' debut a success and put them on the map. The idea was, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we could have doctors actually build their own ADC to understand what makes it so different from chemotherapy?"
85,000 LEGO™ blocks later, we'd created an incredible buzz at the conference, made it onto local TV, along the way receiving props on the Wall Street Journal health blog — and established
a tradition of using charming, low-tech ways to illustrate our high-science concept.
We followed it up the next year using a balloon sculpture that showed the stages of the MOA in
a way that physicians had never seen before and found fascinating. Oncologists now make a point of visiting the SeaGen booth every year to see what the brand team has come up with.
