Top 50 Pharma Tracker: AstraZeneca’s vaccine trial safety discussed but transparency is celebrated.

Discover what healthcare professionals (HCPs) think about pharmaceutical products and their manufacturers, as it happens, through CREATION.co’s tracking updates. How are HCPs responding to drug launch news? How are HCPs talking about or engaging with the Top 50 pharma companies on social media? Each week CREATION.co’s tracking updates bring you the latest insights from the conversation of HCPs across the globe discussing these topics and more.

September’s Top 50 Pharmaceutical Companies mentioned by HCPs on Twitter

September’s insights from HCPs mentioning Top 50 Pharmaceutical Companies

The five pharmaceutical companies that were mentioned the most by healthcare professionals (HCPs) on Twitter during September 2020 were AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson (J&J), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), and Sanofi.

For a second month, AstraZeneca (AZ) remained the most mentioned top 50 pharmaceutical company by HCPs online, again driven by the ongoing developments of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate with the University of Oxford. This month, the trial was suspended due to an adverse event and HCPs responded stating that safety should be “the top concern”. This was also the biggest story in our monthly COVID-19 vaccine candidate tracker which goes into the story in more detail.

News that @AstraZeneca #covid19 vaccine is put on hold should be humbling to all those who are predicting that a vaccine is “approved” by November. Vaccine development is a difficult & time-intensive process. Safety must be the top concern. https://t.co/rkbbJ8WlJj

— Leana Wen, M.D. (@DrLeanaWen) September 8, 2020

After it published the trial’s protocol, HCPs were pleased with AstraZeneca’s transparency and information about the vaccine candidate was shared in the three top external links this month.

1. STAT News shared that the AZ/Oxford vaccine trial was to be put on hold (719 mentions).
2. The New York Times commented that AZ is under fire for vaccine safety (119 mentions).
3. AstraZeneca released the Clinical Study Protocol for their Phase III vaccine trial (97 mentions).

Another key story emerged this month as J&J began enrollment for their Phase III COVID-19 vaccine candidate trial. Infectious disease physician, Celine Gounder, heralded this as “some good news” and defined how it differs from other vaccines currently in development.

1/ Some good news on the COVID front today: J&J started enrolling participants in a phase III clinical trial of its coronavirus vaccine. This vaccine requires only ONE dose (not two like Moderna & Pfizer vaccines) and only needs to be refrigerated (not frozen). pic.twitter.com/Bhx7ffPcTi

— Céline Gounder, MD, ScM, FIDSA 🇺🇦 (@celinegounder) September 23, 2020

The share of conversation covering COVID-19 among posts about pharmaceutical companies has begun to increase once again, now making up over 40% of the overall monthly volume. Beyond the virus conversation, key trial data gained traction in HCP conversation, including Pfizer-sponsored JAVELIN Renal 101 trial for their Renal Cell Cancer product avelumab. An investigator on the trial, Dr Toni Choueiri, posted the data on Twitter explaining the design and results in a thread and tagged other key contributors.

1/Our latest work just published in @NatureMedicine!
Congrats to all authors including co-leads @motzermd @sloan_kettering, #PaulRobbins @Pfizer & @AlbigesL @GustaveRoussy; @tompwles1 @QMBCI, #Haanen,+many others, not on @Twitter https://t.co/G9LiXhU1ID #kcsm #KidneyCancer pic.twitter.com/yqXtvvRYA7

— Toni Choueiri, MD (@DrChoueiri) September 7, 2020

CREATION.co continues to analyse online HCP conversation on a variety of topics including virtual congress, healthcare changes since the pandemic, product development and therapy area specific insights.

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• In September 2020, CREATION Pinpoint® identified 16,646 healthcare professional (HCP) authored tweets from 7,964 individual HCPs mentioning a top-50 pharmaceutical company (according to revenue). 
• Data for this research was analysed from the online Twitter conversations of HCPs in all languages mentioning a Top 50 pharmaceutical company between September 1st and September 30th 2020.
• Unless otherwise specified, mentions of a company are not limited to its Twitter account(s).
• In some cases, a tweet may mention more than one company account (eg. @abbottnews and @abbottglobal) – this only counts as one Company Mention but two Account Mentions.
• The Number of Twitter Accounts Mentioned only include those accounts mentioned by HCPs.
•  Johnson & Johnson was included as a whole, encompassing its pharmaceutical subsidiary, Janssen. In September, 746 of these posts mentioned Janssen.

The Top 50 Pharma tracker archive