Monthly Round-Up of What to Read on Pharma Law and Policy

By Ameet Sarpatwari and Aaron S. Kesselheim

Each month, members of the Program On Regulation, Therapeutics, And Law (PORTAL) review the peer-reviewed medical literature to identify interesting empirical studies, in-depth analyses, and thoughtful editorials on pharmaceutical law and policy.

Below are the papers identified from the month of July. The selections feature topics ranging from the reporting of clinical trial subgroup effects in top medical journals, to an assessment of generic drug approvals since the 1984 Hatch-Waxman Act, to the impact of proposed Medicare Part D reforms on cancer drugs. A full posting of abstracts/summaries of these articles may be found on our website.

  1. Gabler NB, Duan N, Raneses E, Suttner L, Ciarametaro M, Cooney E, Dubois RW, Halpern SD, Kravitz RL. No improvement in the reporting of clinical trial subgroup effects in high-impact general medical journals. Trials. 2016;17(1):320.
  2. Gagne JJ, Han X, Hennessy S, Leonard CE, Chrischilles EA, Carnahan RM, Wang SV, Fuller C, Iyer A, Katcoff H, Woodworth TS, Archdeacon P, Meyer TE, Schneeweiss S, Toh S. Successful comparison of US Food and Drug Administration Sentinel analysis tools to traditional approaches in quantifying a known drug-adverse event association. Clin Pharmacol Ther. 2016 Jul 14. [Epub ahead of print].
  3. Gupta R, Kesselheim AS, Downing N, Greene J, Ross JS. Generic Drug Approvals Since the 1984 Hatch-Waxman Act. JAMA Intern Med. 2016 Jul 18. [Epub ahead of print].
  4. Haffner ME. The history of orphan drug regulation – US and Beyond. Clin Pharmacol Ther. 2016 Jul 9. [Epub ahead of print].
  5. Hoekman J, Klamer TT, Mantel-Teeuwisse AK, Leufkens HG, De Bruin ML. Characteristics and follow-up of postmarketing studies of conditionally authorized medicines in the EU. Br J Clin Pharmacol. 2016;82(1):213-26.
  6. Luo J, Kesselheim AS. Protecting Pharmaceutical Patents and Test Data: How the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Could Affect Access to Medicines in the US and Abroad. AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(7):727-35.
  7. Mailankody S, Prasad V. Implications of Proposed Medicare Reforms to Counteract High Cancer Drug Prices. JAMA. 2016;316(3):271-2.
  8. van Staa TP, Goldacre B, Buchan I, Smeeth L. Big health data: the need to earn public trust. BMJ. 2016 Jul 14;354:i3636.

Ameet Sarpatwari

Ameet Sarpatwari is an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School, an Associate Epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Assistant Director of the Program On Regulation, Therapeutics, And Law (PORTAL) within the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics. His research draws upon his interdisciplinary training as an epidemiologist and lawyer and focuses on the effects of laws and regulations on therapeutic development, approval, use, and related public health outcomes.

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