Decision catalogueModality pressure-test

Treat food-effect control as a financing gate, not a footnote

Decision problem

When an oral incretin thesis sells convenience, what exposure constraint still kills the financing story?

Thesis

If an oral incretin thesis depends on convenience versus injectables, meal-window constraints are a decision variable — not a CMC detail to defer.

Early-stage reviews often grade oral metabolic programs on mechanism class and early exposure. That cut is incomplete. The commercial claim is usually adherence and convenience — and those claims fail if dosing instructions recreate injectable friction in another form.

A Decision Sprint pass forces an explicit band for fed/fasted exposure ratios and a plain-language meal instruction patients would actually follow. If that band cannot be stated from the package, the adherence upside remains a hypothesis rather than a decision-ready claim.

Comparators differ by molecule, formulation, and trial design. The point of the sprint is not to score the class — it is to bind the financing narrative to exposure evidence partners can inspect.

Claim map

Must-be-true cuts a Decision Sprint memo would force

  • Convenience versus injectable depends on a patient-followable meal window
  • Fed/fasted exposure stays inside a pre-agreed band at the stated dose
  • Use of proceeds reaches a claim-resolving food-effect or formulation gate

Decision triggers

Outputs from the claim test that should change the conversation

  • Food-effect outside the stated band without a funded mitigation path
  • Meal instructions that recreate injectable-level friction
  • Adherence upside claimed without exposure evidence tied to real-world dosing

Sources

Related in the catalogue

Facing this cut on a live $1–10M package?

Scope a Decision Sprint for one opportunity under your deal deadline—claim map, risk register, management questions, and partner briefing.