Roche/Genentech and AstraZeneca have the best-performing medical science liaison (MSL) teams in oncology, according to a ZoomRx survey of physicians.
ZoomRx asked 51 oncologists working in academic and community settings in the U.S. to rate every MSL team they had interacted with in the previous three months. Oncologists rated the teams on seven weighted attributes, including scientific depth, responsiveness, research collaboration and the quality of the materials.
The MSL team at Roche/Genentech pipped AstraZeneca to the top spot, achieving a performance score of 80% compared to 79% for its rival. Roche/Genentech scored at least 70% on each attribute, with its scores for responsiveness and research collaboration rising to 83%. Oncologists praised the MSL team for being scientifically substantive, consistently accessible and nondisruptive to their clinical practice.
AstraZeneca’s MSL team shone on the communication and engagement and quality of materials scores, achieving 84% ratings on both attributes. While those strengths narrowly failed to secure AstraZeneca the top spot, there is another area in which the company’s MSL team is the undisputed leader: reach.
AstraZeneca’s MSLs had interacted with 63% of the surveyed oncologists, compared to an average of 28% across the 20 drugmakers ranked in the survey. Roche had a reach of 35%, while Bayer, which placed third with a performance score of 77%, interacted with 12% of the oncologists.
Reach is partly a reflection of the companies’ product portfolios. Bayer has one blockbuster cancer drug, Nubeqa, and it is only used to treat prostate cancer. AstraZeneca has six blockbuster cancer products approved across a range of tumor types, exposing its MSLs to a higher proportion of oncologists.
Yet factors other than portfolio breadth likely contributed to the reach rankings, with oncologists calling AstraZeneca’s MSL team “the most proactive out of all the brands” and praising one of its employees for being “helpful in initiating conversations.”
The comments point to MSLs’ role in initiating interactions with oncologists. Despite sometimes being seen as an on-demand resource, MSLs typically drove first contact with oncologists. Healthcare professionals initiated one-fifth of the interactions.