Novartis will no longer sponsor a contest designed to support the publication of peer review articles about Entresto, the company's important new heart failure drug.
The contest is taking place on , an open access journal, publishing platform, and vehicle for industry-sponsored content. The contest offered $10,000 in rewards for articles supporting a recent update to heart failure guidelines that endorsed the use of Entresto. The competition "seeks to develop" case reports and original articles about the new updated guideline.
As reported here last week, the competition began to fall apart as soon as questions about it were raised. Members of a distinguished "peer review panel" of cardiologists removed themselves from the panel as soon as these questions were raised.
The company said today that it would no longer provide financial support to the contest. Here is Novartis's statement:
"Heart failure is a major public health issue and despite the recent update of clinical guidelines, the condition remains uncontrolled for a large percentage of patients. We believe that it's important for the medical community to share their experiences with each other and demonstrate how they are practicing medicine in this evolving area. This program was designed to facilitate the exchange of scientific and clinical information about how the medical community is applying the new guideline update for the treatment of heart failure with reduced ejection fraction. However, Novartis has made the decision to end our support of the program because we are no longer confident that it will meet our goals of scientific exchange among healthcare providers. We remain committed to supporting independent medical education."
Update, 3:50 p.m., Dec. 19:
The webpage for the contest now states that the competition has been suspended. Here is the text of the statement:>
This competition has been suspended.
Heart failure is a major public health issue and despite the recent update of clinical guidelines, the condition remains uncontrolled for a large percentage of patients.
Through this program we hoped to independently document scientific and clinical experiences focused on how the medical community is applying the new HFrEF guideline update. As an open-access educational program, we also hoped to share those results (positive or negative) with the global community to ultimately further medical knowledge and improve the lives of patients.
However, we no longer believe that we will be able to meet the objectives for this specific program, and are therefore suspending the call for articles.
Cureus remains committed to independent, open-access medical publishing and education. No submissions fees. No copyright paywalls. Ever.