A U.K. marketing watchdog has sided with Roche over Bayer after a spat between the companies boiled over, ruling that pre-license promotion of the German drugmaker’s eye med discredited the industry.
Roche filed a complaint with the PMCPA, a self-regulatory body, after talks with Bayer failed to resolve a dispute about a medical meeting in the U.K.
At the meeting, Bayer sponsorship supported a U.S.-based speaker who gave two presentations about age-related macular degeneration (AMD). The meeting took place after Bayer and Regeneron’s AMD drug Eylea HD was approved in the U.S., but shortly before it got the nod in the U.K.
According to Roche—which sells rival AMD drug Vabysmo—Bayer had prior knowledge of the likely content of the presentations, which included discussion of Eylea HD, and as such its sponsorship was “not strictly arm’s length.” Bayer defended itself, arguing it had no prior knowledge or control over the content, but lost both the initial case and the appeal.
The PMCPA rejected Bayer’s argument on the grounds that the drugmaker would have anticipated that the presentations would cover Eylea HD based on their titles and the background of the speaker, who was a named investigator on trials of the AMD drug.
That conclusion led the watchdog to find that Bayer not only breached a rule against preauthorization promotion but also failed to maintain high standards and discredited the industry.
The ruling, which was upheld on appeal, followed talks between Bayer and Roche that eventually turned sour, according to the PMCPA case report. Bayer accused Roche of repeatedly failing to comply with the conventions and standards of the intercompany dialogues that drugmakers typically engage in before involving the PMCPA, suggesting that failing to maintain high standards in intercompany dialogues may serve to discredit the pharma industry.
Bayer claimed that Roche made “false and disparaging” allegations of deliberate document falsification during the talks. Senior Roche staff later offered a verbal resolution of the complaint at a face-to-face meeting, according to Bayer, only to withdraw the olive branch a few days after the meeting via email “without adequate explanation.”
The companies have a history of butting heads. In another PMCPA case that concluded last year, Bayer accused Roche of attempting to raise speculative concerns, making explicit demands and engaging in behavior that was against the spirit of intercompany dialogue.
Bayer cited those previous accusations in its defense in the new case, claiming that in both sets of talks, Roche had introduced unrelated complaints that were unsupported by evidence.