Apellis Pharmaceuticals is eyeing happy days for its new geographic atrophy (GA) therapy Syfovre. With the market to itself, for now, the biotech is working to raise awareness about the disease and its warning signs—and has brought Henry Winkler on board to help get the message out.
The FDA approved Syfovre in February, making it the first product authorized for use in GA. Iveric Bio is in hot pursuit, with the FDA set to decide whether to approve its GA candidate in August, but for now Syfovre is the only game in town. Moving into virgin territory, Apellis’ first focus is to ensure patients are under specialists and understand they have a treatment option.
“We're really trying to educate on what the disease is and what it is that you should be looking for. If you're older, and you see vision changes, and you know that there's something that's not quite right, you should say something to your physician, especially if you’re in that age range of 75 and older,” David Acheson, senior vice president, North America commercial at Apellis, said.
Today, around half of patients with diagnosed GA are under retina specialists that do eye injections but the rest are across other offices, such as optometry and general ophthalmology sites. Other patients may have undiagnosed GA, an advanced form of age-related macular degeneration. By raising awareness of GA, Apellis hopes to get more patients referred to specialists who can diagnose and treat the disease.
Winkler, an actor who made his name as "The Fonz" in the TV show Happy Days, is supporting Apellis’ work to raise awareness of GA. The work is personal for Winkler, whose father-in-law suffered vision loss that forced him to “give up his dental practice when he could no longer see cavities,” the actor said in a video for Apellis.
In the video, which is on Apellis’ “Eyes on GA” website, Winkler delivers a monologue about his father-in-law’s experience from a film set and discusses his own thinking about GA. “I’m proactive when it comes to vision. If I started seeing changes, I’d carry my car to the eye doctor’s office. That’s how on top of your vision you have to be,” Winkler said.
The actor’s personal relationship with vision loss was part of the reason that Apellis made him the face of the campaign. The other key factor was the likeability of Winkler, a man who has been making Americans laugh for 50 years, among the target demographic.
“He tested better through our agency than any celebrity they've ever done testing for,” Acheson said. “He had a 99% rating. When we tested with patients, many people said, ‘I don't want a celebrity, that's not something that interests me.’ But when they saw Henry Winkler they said, ‘but I do like him.’ He's just a likable guy.”
In the coming months, Winkler, currently on screens in a new season of Barry, will be talking about GA and his personal story as part of the media work for his professional career. Apellis will then transition to TV and radio work. “At some point, we may entertain doing something product-specific, but today it's all going to be disease state education, and that's for the foreseeable future,” Acheson said.