While we wait for FDA approval, I have been researching adoption rates for new drugs. This is called "diffusion of innovation". It predicts how much you will sell in your first year on the market and how many years it takes to get to peak revenue. (TST's market study estimates US$400m annual revenue at peak for the US.)
So far, I have found one example of an innovation in pharma: the adoption curve for the PSA test for prostate cancer in Scotland. (info.cancerresearchuk.org/cancerstats/types/prostate/incidence).
- US-FDA approved PSA test for clinical use in the US in 1986.
- Scotland started using the test in 1989.
- US-FDA approved PSA for screening in the US in 1994.
- Scotland year 1 = 5% of peak revenue
- Scotland year 2 = 10% of peak revenue
- Scotland year 3 = 32%
- Scotland year 4 = 54%
- Scotland year 5 = 76%
- Scotland year 6 = 88%
- Scotland year 7 = 100% which is about when they reached peak revenue.
I found someone's masters thesis on the web (www.biocenit.cat/doc/Master_Thesis_Alex_Vinyals.pdf) dated June 8, 2014. 35 pages. It is called "Determining the Diffusion of Innovations and the Dissemination Network in a Healthcare Organization".
It cites other articles on this issue in the appendix. It is a difficult read and the person is writing in English, which is likely not his first language.
He studied a prescription database, which pharma companies purchase to prepare marketing campaigns. If contains doctors (named) and their prescription history by patient (I think not named). The thesis makes the doctors anonymous by assigning each of them a number. What he found was that new drugs get spread by early adopters and people networked to opinion leaders. From the network map in his thesis, there looks to be only 4-6 main opinion leaders that you have to reach, among thousands of doctors. Remarkable.
This will matter for TST as they try to get doctors to adopt their treatment. It looks like it will be easier to reach the market than I thought.