Amy Lundquist
Senior Product Manager, Rare Disease Marketing
Biogen
Expanding the Audience
When SPINRAZA launched in 2016, it was the first and only treatment for Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), a devastating progressive rare genetic disease that results in weakness and wasting of muscles, including respiratory muscles. Symptoms can appear at birth or be delayed until adulthood. SPINRAZA offers real hope to pediatric and adult patients, and those who love them.
In 2019, the brand faced its first competitor, a gene therapy, and now faces another market entrant with the expected launch of a daily oral therapy in 2020. Meanwhile, SPINRAZA is administered through intrathecal injections. This meant anyone who was joining the SPINRAZA brand team during this time, had to be up for a challenge. Fortunately, Amy Lundquist, who became a part of the team in early 2019, was just that.
Amy was well-versed in the brand and highly motivated to deliver the best for patients. She knew that for continued success, the brand must engage physicians and patients in a discussion of the overarching impact of SPINRAZA. And from her point of view, that included expanding the audience.
She championed the development of a new promotional campaign to help the sales teams broaden beyond academic neurologists. She conceived, developed, and conducted live-training workshops to help reps become comfortable with the new materials and approaching this broader audience with less familiarity of a rare disease like SMA.
“She’s an amazing problem-solver,” says Heather La Chance, Group Account Director, precisioneffect. “And she’s just really nice.”
Amy balances her strategic vision with a host of operational duties from managing budgets to facilitating ongoing communications between sales and marketing. Her colleagues and partners celebrate her ease in moving from strategic to tactical, her ability to produce (and get others to produce) on accelerated timelines, and moderate multidisciplinary debates.
And Amy is always looking to improve and grow. She is currently working on a marketing-focused MBA from the Lazaridis School of Business & Economics and is enrolled in a marketing development program with Kellogg School of Management.
