AstraZeneca backs web portal for breast cancer docs

AstraZeneca ($AZN) has sponsored a web portal that features videos of breast-cancer patient testimonials, becoming one of the latest drugmakers to provide online content to target patient populations.

The portal is hosted on OncLive.com, which provides oncology content for patients and practitioners. London-based AstraZeneca's company logo appears across the top of the main web page, which says the content is for U.S. healthcare professionals.

PMLiVE's Dominic Tyer noted that AZ "may be missing a trick, perhaps driven by regulatory caution, by not following the footsteps of rivals like Roche … in collecting its patient stories into a dedicated YouTube playlist." So while AstraZeneca has made an effort to target specific constituents with online content, the company may have missed a beat by neglecting the social media angle of online content sharing.

Separate from the portal, AstraZeneca promotes multiple breast-cancer therapies, including the off-patent drugs Arimidex and Faslodex. The company has been reorganizing R&D and rebooted its drug-hunting strategy in hopes of identifying new cancer therapies with partners such as Moderna Therapeutics.

- check out Tyer's take

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