LEO Pharma's Patient-Centric Approach

Given the increasing focus of large pharma companies on specific therapeutic areas, how is LEO Pharma positioning itself to capitalize on the unmet needs in other areas, and what strategies are you employing to ensure long-term success in these spaces?

So large pharma companies typically focus on large brands. You know, typically, they're in the game of trying to find blockbusters, defined by more than a billion dollars in annual sales. And what we're doing is really focusing in on one specific disease state, truly becoming an expert in that disease state, being medical dermatology, and trying to find some of the white spaces in medical dermatology. So instead of competing in, say, developing the 15th systemic treatment for psoriasis, and focusing in on, you know, say, 5% of patients that live with moderate to severe versions of that disease, which is kind of the big pharma playbook we're really trying to kind of find, where are those spaces in the market where there's really hard to treat dermatological diseases, where are there completely underserved diseases? Where are there some rare diseases? And we're referring to this approach as putting pearls on a string.

So instead of making a big binary bet and trying to find that next biologic that could potentially be worth billions, as nice and as appealing as that is, let's really kind of focus in on, again, there's all kinds of just rare and debilitating diseases and medical dermatology. And how can we kind of find that sweet spot in the market where these are sometimes brands that aren't going to be of interest to Big Pharma because they're, quite frankly, just too small, but if we're able to put several of them together and create some economies of scale and truly show up as a leading medical DERM company. We believe that the sum of those parts will be as good or even greater than us making the big bet going after you know that next biologic, or that next, you know, big blockbuster treatment.

Can you elaborate on specific patient centric initiatives LEO has implemented to ensure that the patient voice is integrated into drug development and commercialization processes?

It is so important in medical dermatology to really understand the needs of the patient, and a really good example of that is a drug that we're hoping to bring to the marketplace for a disease called chronic hand eczema. Now chronic hand eczema, especially here in the United States, is not actually a disease state that is that well understood Eczema is kind of a catch all term for a lot of different inflammatory skin conditions. But when you talk to someone living with CHE, chronic hand eczema, I mean, effectively, their hands become so cracked and scaled that it's really hard for them just to function and beyond the function of being able to use your hands, which obviously, if you know you're a surgeon, if you're a kitchen worker, even if you're driving a vehicle. I mean, you need your hands for literally doing everything. What we came to learn is that there's a huge psychological component.

I mean, imagine, you know, meeting someone for the first time and shaking their hand, and you can just see that person kind of shiver a little bit when they feel that scaly hand, you know. Think about again, how we just use our hands as just, you know, kind of a way of touching, you know, a child, or a way of showing affection, or a way of comforting someone. So, understanding the psychological issues that go along with CHE, in addition to understanding, of course, the actual symptoms of the disease state, led us to say, let's take a product and develop it specifically for that condition.

So, with this product that we're developing, we can pursue, and we will pursue multiple indications, but we really prioritized, let's focus first on a real big unmet need, and specifically formulate it in a way that can be used with the hands. Because, again, if you're talking about a topical product, and it's going to be used on the hands, and it's really greasy, it's going to be really limiting. So, you need to make sure that it's something that is going to be something that the patient uses, in addition to, of course, being efficacious, and with it goes without saying, being safe. And that's the other area that, instead of using, you know, some of the systemic treatments that aren't specifically indicated for this disease state, which does open up potential safety concerns. You know, we're really able to take a targeted approach, give the patient and the provider peace of mind, and ideally, just really give them their life back by giving them use of their hands. Again, I think that's a good example of really kind of putting the patient at the center and developing a treatment for them.