Biogen has teamed with gymnast Suni Lee for a campaign, leveraging the Olympic gold medalist’s health journey and social media audience to vault deeper into kidney health awareness.
Lee was diagnosed with two rare kidney diseases in 2023. The next year, the gymnast partnered with the American Kidney Fund on an education and awareness campaign. Lee has been “a very visible advocate for kidney health,” Lynn Leber, vice president at Biogen, told Fierce. The visibility and familiarity of Lee’s story informed Biogen’s interest in partnering with the athlete.
“What we particularly liked about Suni was that she’s been on a very familiar journey of gathering information, managing through setbacks, then ultimately working with her healthcare team to find a treatment plan,” Leber said.
Working through the process enabled Lee to re-enter the world of elite gymnastics. That story resonates with people living with rare kidney diseases, especially individuals with complement 3 glomerulopathy (C3G) and primary immune-complex membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis (IC-MPGN), Leber said. Last year, Biogen acquired Empaveli, a treatment for C3G and IC-MPGN, in a $5.6 billion takeover.
Biogen has shared Lee’s story on its “Keep Your Momentum” website and plans to use social media to drive traffic to the page. The focus on “momentum” reflects Biogen’s intent to “encourage and inspire people that they don’t have to be held back by their disease,” Leber said. Biogen wants to “help people really see the positivity and the fact that there are options and paths forward,” the VP added.
The campaign will feature “a series of posts coming from [Lee’s] handle, both content that she creates herself, so organic content, along with some of our own social media channels,” Leber said. Biogen will explore other channels down the line but for now is focused on social.
The biotech reached that decision because kidney disease patients seek information and connection on social media, and because Lee is active on the platforms, Leber said. Lee’s follower counts are 3.4 million on Instagram and 3.8 million on TikTok. The gymnast published a sponsored Biogen post on Instagram this week.
Biogen will track early indicators of the campaign’s impact using social media engagement metrics, such as clicks and views, Leber said. The biotech is also very interested in how often people are visiting its campaign website and engaging with videos and resources designed to support conversations with healthcare teams.
Longer term, Leber plans to use focus groups and market research to assess if the campaign and related resources have led patients to have conversations with their healthcare teams and helped inform those talks.
Biogen’s work with Lee is part of a broader push into kidney disease. The campaign with Lee, which runs to mid-2027, is the “perfect partnership” for showing Biogen’s commitment to nephrology, Leber said. Nephrology could become increasingly important to Biogen as it works to grow Empaveli sales and bring kidney transplant drug candidate felzartamab to market.