Astellas' recent acquisition, Iveric Bio, has launched a fresh awareness campaign for a disease it recently received FDA approval to treat. To help spread the word, it has enlisted two-time Emmy Award-winning actor Eric Stonestreet.
In the new campaign, Stonestreet, best known for his role as Cameron Tucker in the ABC sitcom "Modern Family," will, alongside his mother Jamey, share stories about geographic atrophy (GA), a form of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) that causes irreversible vision loss.
There’s a family connection here as Stonestreet's maternal grandmother, Helen, lived with significant vision loss due to her AMD and was later diagnosed with GA, while his mother Jamey has also been diagnosed with AMD.
“After watching how quickly my grandma Helen's vision loss progressed, my family and I are motivated to prioritize our eye health,” said Stonestreet in a press release. “Knowing that GA runs in the family is why I am proactive about seeing my doctor for regular eye exams, and my mom regularly visits her eye doctor to stay on top of her AMD.”
As part of the campaign, there is a dedicated website featuring a video from Stonestreet and his mother incorporating a comedic element reminiscent of "Modern Family." The site and video prominently display Iveric's logo but do not directly mention GA drugs.
Back in May, Astellas paid out a cool $5.9 billion to buy the biotech and establish itself as a player in an emerging eye disease niche. At the time, the Japanese pharma was buying into the high promise of avacincaptad pegol, a complement C5 protein inhibitor that reduced the rate of GA progression in a phase 3 clinical trial.
Just a few months later, the FDA approved the drug, now marketed as Izervay. It is poised to compete with Apellis' Syfovre, which received U.S. regulatory approval back in February.
As the only two treatments for the condition, introduced within a few months of each other, much is at stake in this emerging market. An estimated 1.5 million Americans are believed to suffer from the condition. While it's still early days, analysts anticipate the field will evolve into a blockbuster category in the coming years, similarly to the way the wet AMD market has grown.