Novartis dissolves agreement to market Pear Therapeutics’ prescription digital therapeutics for substance/ opioid abuse

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As San­doz returns mar­ket­ing rights for dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics to Pear, what does it mean for co-pro­mote arrange­ments? (MM&M):

“San­doz, the gener­ics divi­sion of Novar­tis, is alter­ing com­mer­cial course, return­ing mar­ket­ing duties for two pre­scrip­tion dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics (DTx) back to Pear Ther­a­peu­tics. The move, which some had antic­i­pat­ed, comes 18 months after the two signed a co-pro­mo­tion deal.

Since the Sandoz/Pear pact was wide­ly seen as a lit­mus test of sorts for pharma’s role in help­ing dis­trib­ute this nascent tech­nol­o­gy, the com­mer­cial break-up rais­es ques­tions about the via­bil­i­ty of such part­ner­ships going for­ward. It also high­lights the par­ties’ some­times con­flict­ing pri­or­i­ties: pharma’s con­cern about its core busi­ness ver­sus dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics firms’ wor­ries about fund­ing and investment…

Despite the Sandoz/Pear news, he and oth­ers fore­see such col­lab­o­ra­tions con­tin­u­ing. DTx still rep­re­sents a “huge oppor­tu­ni­ty” for phar­ma, wrote Alessio Brunel­lo, senior phar­ma ana­lyst with Glob­al­Da­ta, in a note Thurs­day. DTx, he said, should see con­tin­ued part­ner­ship activ­i­ty in R&D and ther­a­peu­tics, due in part to pres­sure on health sys­tems from the aging pop­u­la­tion and increas­ing costs and in part to the poten­tial of improved adherence.

DTx can be pre­scribed as monother­a­py or togeth­er with oth­er ther­a­pies to pre­vent, man­age or treat dis­eases across diverse indi­ca­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly chron­ic dis­eases and neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­ders. Pear’s reSET prod­uct, approved by the FDA in 2017, was the first soft­ware appli­ca­tion sanc­tioned for clin­i­cal use to treat sub­stance use dis­or­der (SUD) relat­ed to stim­u­lants, cannabis, cocaine and alcohol…

Pay­ers think of these solu­tions as dif­fer­ent, she (Lisa Flaiz at Bris­tol-Myers Squibb) said. “But in my opin­ion, it shouldn’t mat­ter whether it’s a pill or an app. If the out­comes are the same, the pay­ers should be pay­ing for the outcome.”

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