Agendia

About Agendia Inc.: Founded in 2003, Agendia is a molecular cancer diagnostics company based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Huntington Beach, California. The company’s products are based on a cutting edge genomics platform for tumor gene expression profiling that helps physicians more accurately personalize cancer treatment.

Challenge: MammaPrint, Agendia’s breast cancer recurrence assay, boasts a 70‐gene profile signature, produces definitive patient stratification and is the first assay of its kind to be cleared by the FDA. However, Agendia and its lead product MammaPrint were virtually unknown to physicians and industry‐wide, physicians incorrectly believed thei competitor’s assay was also FDA approved. The company engaged Ricochet to generate coverage in both the mainstream media and targeted trades to dispel misconceptions and drive sales and raise the company’s profile among physicians, patients and key stakeholder groups.

Strategy: Ricochet identified two key objectives for Agendia, namely to generate broad awareness of the company with surgical oncologists and pathologists and drive MammaPrint specific coverage in target areas. To pursue these goals, two separate but simultaneous campaigns were crafted. Ricochet arranged briefings with oncology trade publications for the company’s Chief Medical Officer and Chief Executive Officer at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABC), a leading industry conference. Briefings were secured around the release of significant MammaPrint data at the symposium and also served as an opportunity to introduce the company to reporters. This initial outreach was followed by regional outreach with physicians already using the technology and broader mainstream outreach to select healthcare reporters.

Results: Following the initial SABC briefings, Agendia received feature coverage in many trade and regional outlets including Genome Web, Modern Healthcare and OC Metro. These briefings also served to help establish relationships with key trade publications who requested continuous updates on all future company developments. Our mainstream outreach also produced a cover story in The New York Times, Science section, The Financial Times and ABC.