The Peetes have turned Gemtesa promotion into a family business, with former professional quarterback Rodney Peete now joining his wife Holly Robinson Peete on the list of brand ambassadors for the overactive bladder (OAB) drug.
“21 Jump Street” actor Robinson Peete began working on a Gemtesa campaign in early 2023 and remained involved after Sumitomo Pharma America took over responsibility for promoting the product. Drawing from her own OAB diagnosis, Robinson Peete urged her husband to see a doctor when he began needing to make more frequent trips to the bathroom.
Peete said in a statement that he “couldn’t even make it through an inning of a baseball game.” Though he initially convinced himself the changes were part of aging, “some prodding, and a whole lot of support” from his wife led the ex-NFL player to see a doctor about his symptoms.
Sumitomo’s selection of Peete as its next “Gemtesa Go-Getter” brand ambassador follows the recent expansion of the product label. The FDA approved the drug in December for use in men with OAB symptoms who are receiving pharmacological therapy for benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH).
Sumitomo plans to share Peete’s experiences to reach other men who, like him, have both OAB and BPH. The company is aiming to make Peete’s story and the roadmap to how he’s navigating symptoms, including treatment with Gemtesa, available on the “Time to Go” website later this year.
The campaign is part of Sumitomo’s attempt to use the differentiation provided by the label expansion to maintain the growth of Gemtesa. Sales hit (PDF) $431 million last year, exceeding Sumitomo’s forecast, and the company is aiming to bring in $572 million this year.
However, prescriptions dipped early this year, as Sumitomo Pharma CEO Toru Kimura explained (PDF) on an earnings call in May.
“This is due to the impact of our price negotiations with payers, where we were bullish because of the new indications, but we received a proposal to lower the price, so once we started activities to have them removed from the formulary,” Kimura said. “We have already seen a large payer return to us, so we are optimistic that performance will return soon.”
At the time, Sumitomo Pharma America CEO Tsutomu Nakagawa was considering “whether to focus on price, being listed in the formulary, volume or market share in order to achieve the best balance.”
In the OAB space, the company competes with several products, including generic versions of Astellas’ Myrbetriq that came to market last year.