It wasn’t until late last year, 35 years into its history, that Ionis Pharmaceuticals earned FDA approval for the first drug it’ll be commercializing on its own rather than with the help of a development partner.
To support the launch of Tryngolza, which is approved to treat adults with familial chylomicronemia syndrome (FCS) as an adjunct to diet, Ionis recently kicked off a pair of omnichannel marketing efforts. The campaigns, “Tame It With Tryngolza” and “It’s Time to Celebrate," are tailored to patients and healthcare providers, respectively.
In developing the campaigns, Ionis was especially conscious of Tryngolza’s status as the “first and only approved treatment for FCS in the U.S. right now,” Kyle Jenne, the company’s chief global product strategy officer, said in an interview.
The patient-centric push—which Jenne described as “one of the best campaigns I’ve seen” in his 25 years in the industry—animates the letters of FCS with spikes, scales, fur and claws to evoke a wild animal. Campaign images show smiling patients holding a leash on the letters, with the tagline, “Your FCS has run wild for too long—tame it with Tryngolza.”
The portrayal of FCS as a monstrous creature is meant to represent the overwhelming nature of the rare genetic disease, in which the body isn’t able to break down dietary fats. The resulting buildup of triglycerides in the blood leads to symptoms like persistent abdominal pain and brain fog as well as an increased risk of pancreatitis.
“We were really trying to bring to life not only how complicated the disease is and how severe it could be, but also the ongoing, day-to-day complications in the way that these patients feel and experience life,” Jenne said. “So, if they can tame the beast, or the beast can be leashed, we feel like patients living with FCS could better take control of their disease and actually have a meaningful improvement in terms of every aspect of their life.”
That potentially life-changing opportunity is also the subject of the HCP-focused campaign. It shows a cluster of chylomicrons—large lipoproteins that transport triglycerides to the bloodstream—depicted as colorful balloons being released into a blue sky, with the buoyant caption, “For your adult patients with familial chylomicronemia syndrome (FCS), it’s time to celebrate significant reductions in triglycerides.”
The campaign is intended to spark relief for doctors who have been “frustrated and disappointed” throughout their careers over the lack of any available treatments for FCS beyond an extremely restrictive low-fat diet, Jenne said.
Ionis developed both the patient- and HCP-facing initiatives through conversations with FCS patients, their caregivers and doctors who treat the condition, “inquiring upfront to understand the different audiences and what their problems are and what they’re trying to solve for," the exec explained.
With the resulting campaigns, the company has three overarching goals, Jenne continued: first, to educate patients and physicians about the product and how it could fill a long-standing gap in care. Second, Ionis is aiming to create “the urgency to treat” by motivating FCS patients to ask their doctors about Tryngolza and doctors to understand how the therapy can help their patients. Finally, in the vein of a disease awareness campaign, the dual initiatives are also meant to convey the importance of lowering triglycerides in FCS to reduce the risk of pancreatitis—“the most devastating part of this disease,” he said.
Jenne suggested that the Tryngolza rollout will be “the first of many” independent launches for Ionis, which is expecting an FDA decision this summer on its donidalorsen as a prophylactic treatment of hereditary angioedema. The company is also eyeing a potential label expansion for Tryngolza, with phase 3 data on the drug’s performance in treating severe high triglycerides expected to read out later this year.
As the first such experience for Ionis, the exec noted that it’s been particularly exciting to witness the company retain total ownership of Tryngolza from its earliest development through, now, its commercialization.
“We conceived and discovered and developed not only the target of apoC-III and the ability to lower triglycerides, [but] we also proved that you can lower the risk of acute pancreatitis in this population by treating them with a treatment like Tryngolza,” Jenne said. “Nobody’s done this before, and so we’re helping a population and really focused in an area that unfortunately had an unmet medical need, and we were able to solve for that.”
He continued, “That’s the most exciting thing—that we’ve been able to carry this through, and now we’ll be actually delivering the treatments directly to patients ourselves. … For us, I think this is a milestone event, and it’s really exciting that the transformation of the company over the last five years or so has brought us to this point.”