Gilead Sciences’ sponsorship of a conference Wi-Fi network has landed it in hot water. U.K drug marketing watchdog the PMCPA ruled the network login process, which directed users to Gilead’s U.S. homepage, broke the rules on drug advertising and represented a failure to maintain high standards.
After receiving a complaint, the PMCPA said it ran an investigation that showed Gilead sponsored the Wi-Fi at a conference in Poland. The opportunity allowed Gilead to make its website the default homepage for Wi-Fi users. When people logged in, using a password that included “Gilead,” they saw a popup that said, “Some content on this site is not intended for people outside the United States.”
Gilead argued that users could choose not to visit the website. While the PMCPA accepted that users didn’t need to read Gilead’s homepage to use the Wi-Fi, the panel concluded that the decision of a U.K.-based drug company to send conference attendees to a U.S.-owned global corporate site brought the case into its jurisdiction.
Once the PMCPA reached that conclusion, the case centered on whether material on the corporate site breached the advertising code. The U.K.-based healthcare professional who complained about the Wi-Fi sponsorship to the PMCPA flagged as problematic a press release on the site about Gilead’s lenacapavir in the prevention of HIV.
Gilead told the PMCPA the press release was “non-promotional, newsworthy, factual and balanced.” But the PMCPA disagreed, telling Gilead that the press release’s use of emotive language such as “landmark” and “innovations that can help end the HIV epidemic in Europe” rendered it promotional. That view led the panel to rule Gilead had broken rules on advertising drugs to the public and on off-label promotion.
Assessing the severity of the breaches, the PMCPA concluded that Gilead had failed to maintain high standards. In the final tally, the panel ruled against Gilead on three breaches of its code but sided with the biotech on the question of whether it had brought discredit on the industry, the self-regulatory body’s most serious consideration. The PMCPA reserves breaches of the discredit clause for times when it wants to communicate “particular censure.”
The case marks the first time since 2023 that the PMCPA has ruled against Gilead, which has only been the target of three investigations this decade. The Gilead cases the PMCPA completed in 2020 and 2023 also related to HIV care, a key therapeutic area for the biotech.