Merck KGaA wants physicians to understand the walls that stand between their cancer patients and good outcomes. In an initiative for oncology professionals, the drugmaker is exploring the mechanisms behind “cancer’s wall of resistance to treatment” ahead of the planned launch of a drug to tackle the problem.
The campaign is focused on locally advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (LA SCCHN), an indication that has missed out on advances that have improved outcomes in other cancers in recent years. Merck KGaA is among the companies to swing and miss at the tumor, terminating a phase 3 trial of its Pfizer-partnered checkpoint inhibitor in 2020, but is now nearing data on its latest crack at the cancer.
With an interim analysis of a phase 3 clinical trial of xevinapant in LA SCCHN planned (PDF) for the fourth quarter, Merck KGaA has begun to ramp up educational, disease-awareness efforts, using the recent American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting to launch its “The Wall in SCCHN” initiative.
The front page of the website, which is aimed at U.S. healthcare professionals, is dominated by a black-and-white photo of a man’s face. One half of the man’s face is missing, leaving a torn-edged hole that reveals a red-brick, full-color wall beneath the skin. Next to the face, the text “exploring the mechanisms behind cancer’s wall of resistance to treatment” explains the image.
Merck KGaA uses wall imagery throughout the website—which discusses how cancer evades apoptosis—and brick-red sections are the main break from the largely monochromatic color scheme. Yariv Hefez, senior vice president, head of global business franchise oncology at Merck KGaA, discussed the design decisions.
“It shows a striking visual that I think sends a very strong message. We did that intentionally because we wanted to trigger curiosity, to trigger interest in the physicians,” Hefez said. “We also have a video. It starts with just the human part of the head and you start to see the wall as it rotates.”
Merck KGaA is using the same idea to target other markets, creating images with people from Asia and Latin America to communicate the wall of resistance concept. Asia, and China in particular, could be a major opportunity for xevinapant because LA SCCHN is more prevalent than in other parts of the world such as the U.S.