Roughly one year since the commercial rollout of Tarsus Pharmaceuticals’ first marketed product Xdemvy, the company is touting the medicine’s debut as “one of the most successful eye care launches to date.”
That’s according to Tarsus CEO Bobby Azamian, M.D., Ph.D., who recently told Fierce Pharma that the company has been “firing on all cylinders” since the start of 2024.
Azamian’s comments came after Tarsus recently reported second-quarter Xdemvy sales of $40.8 million, signaling a 65% increase over 2024’s first quarter. Over the second three months of the year, Tarsus delivered more than 37,000 bottles of Xdemvy to patients and managed to reach roughly 11,000 prescribing eye care professionals, the company added in an earnings release.
Tarsus is starting to gain commercial traction following last summer’s approval of Xdemvy in the common yet misunderstood eyelid disease Demodex blepharitis, which is caused by an infestation of Demodex mites. Tarsus has estimated that as many as 25 million Americans struggle with Demodex blepharitis, which causes eyelid margin inflammation, redness and irritation.
Now, on Xdemvy’s one-year birthday, Azamian figures there are three “major levers” that will help Tarsus extend the drug’s reach moving forward: sales force expansion, broader coverage and direct-to-consumer engagement.
On the first point, Azamian noted that Tarsus is in the process of hiring 50 new representatives and leaders for its commercial division. The company is on track to deploy those new commercial team members by the end of 2024’s third quarter, Tarsus said in its release.
“You can imagine that with approximately 100 salespeople, we can only engage 15,000 doctors so frequently,” Azamian explained in an interview. “By having approximately 150, we can do that more and more, and we know that that leads to more awareness and, ultimately, more patients served.”
As for wider access, Tarsus is “on track” to clinch broad commercial access to Xdemvy by the end of 2024 and get the drug covered under Medicare Part D in 2025, Azamian said.
In the company’s second-quarter earnings update, Tarsus added that it had “significantly expanded payer coverage” of Xdemvy across both commercial and Medicare payers. Specifically, Tarsus has secured several new contracts in the second quarter, including another major commercial plan covering more than 20 million lives plus a “major” Medicare payer covering 10 million lives.
The benefits of those contracts should start to play out during the second half of the year, the company noted.
Lastly, Azamian touched on the success of the company’s Xdemvy “Mite Party” promotional campaign, which launched earlier this year and seeks to raise awareness of Demodex blepharitis and encourage patients who may have the condition to seek out an eye care provider for screening.
“We don’t want to scare patients,” Amazian said of the mite-focused campaign. “We want people to understand what the cause of this disease is and to go see an eye care doctor.”
He also noted that Tarsus took patients’ perspectives into careful consideration when crafting its promotional approach.
“We talked to thousands of patients to understand what would really resonate, and, time and time again, people just want to understand what’s causing this disease—and is there a solution?”
In the wake of Tarsus’ “Mite Party” success, the company is thinking about widening its DTC efforts later this year, Azamian added.
Meanwhile, Tarsus in April picked up $200 million in financing from Pharmakon Advisors, on top of the $180 million equity offering the company pulled off earlier in the year.
“Those funds will really allow us to further accelerate our launch and those initiatives I described: the sales force expansion, the payer engagement and the direct consumer campaigns,” Azamian said.
As of June 30, Tarsus had $323.6 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities on hand, the company noted in its release. So far, it has generated 2024 revenues of $68.4 million, $65.5 million of which came straight from Xdemvy sales.
“The way I think about it is, we’re still pouring fuel on the fire, and we have a very strong financial position to do that,” Azamian said.