Aussie GMs unpack pricing pain points

Australian leaders laid out their concerns and considerations when deciding whether to pursue the launch of a drug, in a packed session on Day 2 of the NEXT Pharma Summit which followed the life of a drug from Bench to Beside.

Heavy hitters on the panel moderated by Pharma in Focus Editor, Christine Spiteri, included BMS Vice President and General Manager Owen Smith, Merck ANZ General Manager and Managing Director Josie Downey, and Leo Pharma AUNZ Country Manager Callum Stacy. The gut instinct was to go with the drug, a hypothetical oral TKI for advance biomarker-driven NSCLC with good Phase 3 results, branded Nexavant.

"You've got clear benefit, your defined benefit in a defined set of patients," Smith said. "These sorts of medicines for targeted, mutated, non-small cell, if you've got that clear, defined benefit and you've got a patient population that is well defined, tend to be the sorts of medicines that PBAC will say yes to."