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KEL531

TIM CALKINS

Forecasting Denosumab
“Our job is quite simple,” explained Jennifer Fry, project manager at Oakdale Strategy
Group, a strategy consulting firm based in Chicago. It was a cold day in early February 2011, and
Fry was meeting with her team. “We’ve been asked to develop a forecast for denosumab for
2015,” she continued. “Our client is one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical firms. The senior executives there are taking a close look at acquiring Amgen and want an outside opinion about denosumab.” Steven Meyers, a partner at the firm, quickly jumped in. “This is an incredibly high-profile assignment because the value of Amgen is closely tied to the revenue forecast for denosumab.
We’ve got an important client and a very …show more content…

In young people, bone is created faster than it is broken down, so bone mass increases and bones strengthen. In older people, however, this balance is reversed. Bone strength generally peaks at about the age of 30. As bones weaken with age, people develop osteopenia, a reduction in bone mass. If the process continues, people develop osteoporosis. Osteopenia and osteoporosis can occur at any age, but it is most common among people older than 50. Women are four times more likely than men to develop osteoporosis. As a woman’s levels of the hormone estrogen declines (such as during menopause), her risk of bone loss significantly increases.
With no obvious symptoms, osteopenia and osteoporosis often go undetected until a diagnosis from a healthcare professional. Untreated, a person can continue living with osteoporosis for many years. The risk of a fracture during this time, however, increases significantly. Fractures are a significant issue for older people. One study of postmenopausal women with osteoporosis reported that 10.9 percent had a vertebral fracture and 2.5 percent had a hip fracture during a three-year period.3
The main way to diagnose osteoporosis was with a bone mineral density (BMD) test. The primary BMD test was dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). During a measurement process that generally took between ten and twenty minutes, a DXA scanner produced two X-ray beams with different

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