Ahead of New York Fashion Week, Gilead Sciences is strutting its marketing stuff to raise awareness of primary biliary cholangitis (PBC).
The pharma—which earned the FDA’s accelerated approval for PBC treatment Livdelzi last year—has tapped Mondo Guerra, a fashion designer who has appeared on “Project Runway,” for an unbranded campaign that transforms the emotional impacts of life with PBC into physical garments.
PBC is a rare chronic autoimmune disease that predominantly affects women, in which the bile ducts become inflamed and slowly destroyed over time, leading to symptoms like fatigue, itching and abdominal pain. Alongside the physical symptoms, people with PBC also report experiencing anxiety, depression, social isolation and other harder-to-see emotional effects of living with the disease.
“All the Feelings with PBC” will kick off with a fashion-forward event in New York on Wednesday, the day before Fashion Week shows begin throughout the city. A runway show will showcase all of the custom looks created by Guerra to visually represent the emotional and psychosocial burdens related to him by people with PBC.
“As someone who’s used fashion to tell my own health story, I know the power that creative expression holds in making invisible experiences visible,” Guerra said in a statement. The designer spoke openly about his HIV-positive status during his time on “Project Runway,” after which he joined Merck’s “I Design” HIV education campaign.
“When I spoke with people living with PBC, I was struck by the strength it takes to carry both the physical symptoms and the emotional weight of the disease, often in silence,” Guerra continued. “This collection is my way of honoring their voices and helping the world see what they go through every day.”
The show will be followed by a panel discussion featuring Guerra, one of the PBC patients who inspired the collection, Gilead comms leader Jeff Eggert and Ilan Weisberg, M.D., chief of the division of gastroenterology and hepatology at NYP Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. According to Gilead, the panel will discuss, among other topics, how chronic illness intersects with one’s identity and creative expression.
Alongside its New York Fashion Week-adjacent placement, the “All the Feelings” initiative also comes amid September’s PBC Awareness Month.
Gilead noted in Wednesday’s announcement that the campaign is part of a broader push by the pharma to “amplify voices within the PBC community, build awareness of the disease’s emotional toll, and foster compassion and understanding through storytelling and art.”
Livdelzi’s approval last summer marked Gilead’s first foray into selling an inflammatory drug, even as it built on the company’s longstanding liver disorder portfolio. Analysts have predicted that the med’s peak annual sales could reach as high as $2 billion.
In the PBC arena, Livdelzi is up against Ipsen and Genfit’s Iqirvo, which was approved shortly before Gilead’s med, and Intercept Pharmaceuticals’ Ocaliva, which late last year hit a roadblock when the FDA opted against turning its accelerated approval into a full green light. Meanwhile, Zydus Therapeutics recently reported a phase 2b/3 win in the indication, while GSK is advancing a candidate to treat itchiness in PBC patients.