Emgality maker Lilly courts payers with new migraine ER data

Sales of Eli Lilly’s migraine and cluster headache med Emgality have lagged behind competitors from Amgen and Novartis and Teva Pharmaceutical. And in its push to bring payers on board, Lilly is deploying a full-court press with some new patient data. Just 5% of frequent migraine sufferers who seek emergency care for their symptoms are treated with a migraine prevention medication like Emgality, according to data from Lilly’s observational study of 20,000 trial patients, dubbed Overcome. Lilly said about 15% of the patient pool pursued emergency care within the last 12 months, presenting a clear gap in patients who are eligible for a preventive treatment but aren’t being prescribed one as well as a need for personalized care outside of the emergency room. “While there could be important reasons to go to an emergency department or urgent care clinic when experiencing a migraine attack, these settings should not usually be the primary source of care,” Dawn Buse, clinical professor of neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said in a statement. “They have a limited ability to provide the optimal, personalized ongoing management this neurological disease requires.” Data from the Overcome study are set to be presented at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Headache Society Saturday in Philadelphia. Keeping patients out of the emergency room with preventive treatment is at the center of Lilly’s Emgality pitch to payers due to the high cost of emergency care. Emgality has so far lagged behind competitors Aimovig from Novartis and Amgen and Ajovy from Teva as the third-to-market CGRP migraine drug.