The sound of your baby struggling to breathe is one of the scariest moments of any parent's life. Sanofi and the American Lung Association (ALA) are unflinchingly dealing with this raw horror in a new awareness push for RSV.
The COVID pandemic has made the entire globe highly attuned to the threat of an infectious, respiratory disease but while we have all been highly attuned to its threat, other, equally and sometimes more serious respiratory infections are being seen as less dangerous than they really are.
The respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a seasonal cold virus, is one such infection, which almost disappeared in 2020 amid lockdowns and mask wearing but came back with a vengeance last summer as social restrictions lifted.
Led by the ALA with help from Sanofi, which alongside AstraZeneca has developed the RSV drug Beyfortus (nirsevimab), the new campaign aims at pushing awareness to parents about this infection and what to look out for in your children.
Sanofi’s Beyfortus earlier this month nabbed a recommended approval from European regulators to prevent RSV in infants. GSK and Pfizer are also working on RSV vaccines, which recently passed phase 3 trials and are now winding their way to regulators.
Sanofi told Fierce Pharma Marketing that its regulatory submission in the U.S. is “planned in the second half of this year” and that it will also be launching its own, separate RSV disease awareness consumer campaign in the U.S. in tandem with RSV Awareness Month in October.
“This initiative further builds on our support of the American Lung Association’s RSV Educational Campaign by continuing to help expand awareness around RSV and its severity,” the Sanofi spokesperson added.
For a healthy adult, RSV will typically present as a heavy cold at worst, but in older people, immunocompromised patients and notably very young children who were born early or are underweight, RSV can cause severe pneumonia.
In infants, this is known as bronchiolitis and is the leading cause of hospitalizations in this age group in the West. Mortality rates are typically very low, with almost all babies surviving, but often they require oxygen and a feeding tube for around a week, with the object of care predominately being to support the baby while it slowly fights the infection.
There is a monoclonal antibody drug for infants sold as Synagis from AstraZeneca/Sobi, though there remains a need for a deeper arsenal of therapies for the condition.
For the ALA and Sanofi campaign, the pair have asked real patients to share their stories that they describe as being “harrowing and hopeful” of their experiences with their children who have been impacted by the disease.
For Sarah Driscoll, RSV was one of her biggest fears when her daughter Charley was born. Following a holiday gathering, Charley started to show symptoms of a cold, which got worse quickly.
“She was placed in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) to be cared for while her tiny body fought against RSV,” she writes on an ALA blog attached to the campaign.
“We made sure she was never alone. Charley was put on forced oxygen. They had to put in a feeding tube. I have a lot of memories like that from her stay in the PICU, but mostly those days blend together in my mind. Thankfully, she got better. After five long days in the PICU, we were able to bring her home,” she said.
It’s a similar story for Tristan and Rocky Lopez who have twins, Alexander and Diego. “Alex was gasping for air like he was drowning in a pool. That's when we realized this was something serious and we needed to rush him to the hospital," said Rocky. “We both felt scared because we had never experienced anything like this.”
The key purpose of the campaign is to help drive parental awareness and education about RSV, while also encouraging parents to speak with their child’s healthcare provider about this serious illness, a Sanofi spokesperson told Fierce Pharma Marketing in an interview.
“Ultimately, our goal is to help make a difference by increasing the number of parents who know not only what RSV is but how unpredictable and dangerous it can be for any infant, as it is the leading cause of infant hospitalization,” Sanofi said in an interview.
“We know that personal stories are an incredibly powerful tool to educate and that it’s important to create a space for people’s RSV stories to be heard in their own words. We understand the impact of patient storytelling in helping to drive awareness and education and to illustrate the burden of this disease.
“It was clear to both organizations that parent storytellers had to be at the heart of this initiative in order to help address the low levels of awareness within this community around RSV and its severity."