Though GSK has put considerable effort into developing pharmacological treatments for gynecological cancers—including Zejula, which is approved by the FDA in ovarian cancer, and Jemperli for endometrial cancer—“we are well aware that medicines are not the only way to improve the outcome for patients,” according to Nina Mojas, the drugmaker’s senior vice president of oncology global product strategy.
Enter: “Your Cancer Is Our Challenge,” a new initiative that GSK unveiled Tuesday with an aim of raising awareness of and breaking down the barriers to care and support that many people with gynecological cancers experience.
“We have been present in this space for years now, and we thought we are actually in a good place … to talk more extensively to patients, to understand more of patients’ needs, patients’ barriers, patients’ gaps in access to healthcare,” Mojas said in an interview with Fierce Pharma Marketing.
“A lot that goes around patients—including access to medicines, including the understanding of the disease and understanding the treatment, dealing with all the everyday needs of getting the treatment—all of that influences the outcome for patients,” she continued. “So, in the end, if we are driving for better outcomes for these specific patients, we need to understand, what are those barriers and what are those gaps?”
To build that understanding, as part one of the Your Cancer Is Our Challenge program, GSK sponsored a survey of more than 800 adults with gynecological cancers—including endometrial, ovarian, cervical, vaginal and vulvar cancers—spanning 10 countries.
From there, the next phase of the initiative will see GSK taking action to address the issues that came up throughout the survey results.
“This is a tool that we can use to create a sense of urgency,” Mojas said of the survey, suggesting that the results can be used not only to activate patient groups, advocacy organizations and healthcare providers around the globe to offer more holistic care and support to patients but also simply to raise awareness of the challenges they face, which will help break down any remaining stigma or isolation linked to gynecological cancers.
The survey, conducted by The Harris Poll, found that nearly three-quarters of patients do not feel empowered to overcome their cancers, even though more than 90% said they feel they’re receiving the best possible treatment, suggesting a heavy emotional burden linked to their treatment and care, per GSK.
That emotional heaviness is further exemplified in how, according to Mojas, about one-third of those surveyed said they feel that they’re to blame for the disease, and many said they found it easy to talk to doctors about their treatment plans but were more hesitant to ask about related aspects like sexual function and fertility—pointing to sizable stigma associated with the group of cancers and therefore the opportunity for GSK to help build out public knowledge of the diseases.
“If we think about, how can we influence this? Just raising awareness of this, many times, is already a step enough for many patients to be able to talk about this,” she said.
Additionally, despite those emotional challenges, just about a quarter of those surveyed said they’ve participated in a patient support group, and only 14% said they’d been able to find a group that actually helped them navigate their experience with cancer. Mojas cited that finding as among the most surprising to her, but also one where GSK could have a sizable impact by upping its support of patient groups.
Meanwhile, many of those surveyed cited a lack of knowledge as a barrier to thorough care and support: Nearly 90% said they wanted to know more about available genomic, biomarker and other test options that could further inform their treatment, and, according to Mojas, around 40% of patients are unclear about what exactly will happen throughout the treatment process.
“In the age of information being available, it is a surprising factor, but it also tells you that these patients are undergoing so many other things that for them to be able to understand all treatment options on their own is actually very, very difficult,” she said, noting, “This is clearly something that we should be able to address and help various stakeholders to address.”
All of those potential solutions—boosting awareness and education around gynecological cancers and their treatments and tests, and building out emotional support resources for patients—“are all really relevant levers to improve the outcome of patients,” Mojas said, adding that they round out GSK’s drug-based efforts to treat the diseases.
“We feel we are in a good place because we know the physician community, we know the healthcare providers, we know, to a large extent, the systems where these patients are treated, we know the outcomes. What was missing was probably this understanding more of the patients’ perspective,” she said. “In the end, the objective of GSK is always to improve outcomes of patients with specific cancers where we have expertise—and improving that is not just through medicines and specific treatment, but many other factors influence that.”