Actor, producer, and artist Lucy Liu has joined Pfizer’s mission to deliver a knockout blow against cancer, becoming the latest face of the Big Pharma’s campaign encouraging people to get screened.
Liu, a star of movies including “Charlie’s Angels” and “Kill Bill,” shared a Pfizer-sponsored social media post about cancer screening with her 1.8 million Instagram followers. The video opens with text saying, “In the fight against cancer, every screen matters,” followed by “we're taking over this screen for cancer screenings.” Then Liu delivers the line “the most important screen is the one that has the potential to save your life.”
Across the rest of the video, Liu discusses how cancer has affected her and her loved ones. Focusing on breast and prostate cancer, indications where Pfizer sells drugs such as Ibrance and Talzenna, Liu says she has seen “how early detection has the possibility to change the course of everything.”
Some of Liu’s friends and family chose to get screened, caught their cancers early and are alive today. Other people were diagnosed too late to receive life-saving treatment. Early detection gives people the chance to act sooner with more options and information, Liu said.
Liu ends the video with a line telling viewers to talk to their doctor and schedule a cancer screening using a Pfizer website. The Pfizer website, which is also referenced in the text post accompanying the video, asks visitors to enter information about their age, smoking history and cancer cases in their family. Users receive a list of recommended screenings and links to doctors based on their responses.
Pfizer has sponsored a series of posts encouraging people to visit the website. In April, which is cancer prevention and early detection month, Liu and an anesthesiologist with 1.5 million Instagram followers, Myro Figura, M.D., have shared sponsored posts.
Breast cancer advocate Katie Thurston posted a Pfizer-partnered video last month. Actor Hill Harper, physician, author and TV personality Jacqueline Walters, M.D., and businesswoman Tina Knowles published posts in February. Liu’s post followed the format established in the earlier updates, which start with the text and line about “the most important screen.”
Oncology is a key therapeutic area for Pfizer, which expanded its presence in the space in 2023 with the $43 billion takeover of Seagen. The Big Pharma has continued to invest in oncology, naming the area as a driver of last year’s 4% rise in R&D spending and committing to a broad clinical program for its PD-1xVEGF bispecific antibody PF'4404.