DeCode to Accelerate Existing-Product Marketing to MDs and further grow Personalized Medicine…

We all recently heard about the warning letters sent from the state of California to firms selling online personal DNA sequencing over the Internet, and requiring a physician’s prescription for the service. One company DeCode, has taken the letter to heart and is revising their marketing plant to actively involve and educate physicians in the process, which is due to become prime in the 3rd and 4th quarters of this year. The company is located in Iceland and has working partnerships with companies like Illumina, Roche, and Merck and one other location in Illinois. Illumina in San Diego is a partner who does the diagnostic portions of the testing. More about the diagnostic testing machines can be read here.

They should have 5 new predictive cancer diagnostics upcoming according to the recent presentation given and have doubled their sales staff, again to focus on educating the physicians and health care facilities. In addition, any physician who becomes familiar with their product can sign up for a free test of their own. They also stated most business is coming now through the health care business channels set up and not from the consumer side. California, New York, and Maryland require licenses and they are waiting for those to be issued.

There are established CPT Codes for billing set up for some individual tests already. They also state the savings can be up to a billion a year as an example for Medicare, with people not being treated with drugs that will show no benefit. 33 Major insurers are involved and are discussing reimbursement levels. This looks to be a major marketing step in getting personalized medicine out there in the day to day doctor/patient care visits. For more information on what Pharmacogenomics is all about, watch the video here. BD

In the coming months, DeCode Genetics plans to intensify its strategy of marketing its tests to US doctors, a demographic the Icelandic company believes will be the bread and butter of its diagnostics business. DeCode’s commercialization plan for its diagnostics products will involve marketing partnerships with prevention-oriented healthcare firms in the US, growing its sales force, reaching out to physicians at medical conferences, publishing in medical journals, and hiring medical opinion leaders to speak about its products.

DeCode’s test for atrial fibrillation determines a patient’s risk of developing the dangerous arrhythmia, based on two markers in the PITX2 gene. By testing patients with the AF assay, the company hopes to prevent the 15 percent to 20 percent of strokes caused by undiagnosed intermittent AF.

DeCode’s prostate cancer test, on the other hand, combines eight different SNP markers to determine a patient’s genetic risk of developing the disease.

DeCode’s glaucoma test detects which existing glaucoma patients are at risk of early exfoliation glaucoma, which carries with it a poorer prognosis, including a higher rate of cataract extraction and resistance to certain treatments.

The breast cancer test, which combines eight SNPs to determine women’s risk for developing estrogen-positive breast cancer, and whether they will benefit from tamoxifen therapy, is slated for launch in the fourth quarter