Live Blogging from FDA in the 21st Century Conference, Panel 6: Regulatory Exclusivities and the Regulation of Generic Drugs and Biosimilars

[Posted on behalf of W. Nicholson Price II, Academic Fellow, The Petrie-Flom Center (with the disclaimer re: live blogging – see posts below)] 

The first panel of today is on regulatory exclusivity and generic drugs, moderated by Ben Roin at the Petrie-Flom Center.

Leading off was Kate Greenwood, discussing orphan drug development and recycled molecules.  She started off with Makena, known as 17-P,  first approved in 1976 as Delalutin.  In 1996 FDA withdrew its approval at the manufacturer’s request, as it hadn’t been marketing it.  A few years later, a study showed that the molecule, 17-P, helped prevent premature birth.  Compounding pharmacies started making it, and in 2006, CustoPharm filed a Citizen’s Petition asking whether the way was clear for a generic; FDA said yes, though the route might be challenging.  But in May 2006, a different company filed for a NDA for this new use; it was approved as Makena in January 2007; the company (KV Pharmaceuticals) priced it at $30,000 for a course of treatment (vs. $300 for the compounded version, still available pre-approval).  Responding to criticism, FDA stated that Makena’s reliance on government funding did not prevent Orphan Drug application.  But a few months later, FDA stated that compounding pharmacies could still make 17-P for patients; KV declared bankruptcy and blamed FDA’s decision not to discretionarily enforce Orphan Drug exclusivity.  KV has since sued FDA and HHS, and the case is pending.

Kate moved on to discuss ways to adjust the innovation/access balance, including shortening the exclusivity period, allowing limited competition, or capping or controlling drug prices.  There are concerns, however, that after Makena payers won’t really allow any monopoly price period.

Next up was Kevin Outterson, talking about opacity of R&D information; all we see are the shadows of data.  There are $250 billion of branded drug sales, with something like $200 billion in patent rents in the U.S. alone (twice that globally).  Patent theory describes this as the engine behind development in drugs – but it’s not free; we pay in higher drug prices.  We’re paying for R&D, not the pills themselves, which would be priced at the generics’ cost.  There’s no industry that celebrates inefficiency the way drugs do, touting the $1.2 billion figure for drug development.  Don’t blame patent law, though!  They require up-front disclosure.  But that doesn’t apply to clinical data, which is kept locked away, only accessible to FDA.  This process, which society pays for, is anathema to the scientific process.

Live Blogging from FDA in the 21st Century Conference, Plenary 2: Alta Charo on Integrating Speed and Safety

By Michelle Meyer

[This is off-the-cuff live blogging, so apologies for any errors, typos, etc]

Day two of PFC’s FDA in the 21st Century conference begins with a morning plenary by the very fabulous Alta Charo, of the University of Wisconsin Law School, who is speaking on “Integrating Speed and Safety.”

Today Alta is presenting what she calls “more of an initial idea than an actual proposal,” and she notes that she’s very interested to hear responses to it, so comment away or contact her offline. She wants to integrate into the usual and longstanding “FDA speed versus safety” debate some concerns that should be of interest to industry. “In other words,” she said, “I’d like to be nice to the drug people.”

Alta begins with a brief history of the speed versus safety debate, which turns out to be quite cyclical. Before 1906, she asks us to recall, we had true snake oil: products with high toxicity and little or no efficacy. Often these products were nevertheless perceived as effective because they contained alcohol or other drugs, so made you feel better at least, but of course that’s part of what made these products so dangerous, especially for children.

And so with the Federal Food and Drugs Act of 1906, we get post-market remedies for misbranding, although they require proof of intent. And then in 1937 over 100 children die from elixir of sulfanilamide. And the following year we get the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. But the FDCA targets only safety. (Although rightly Alta notes that it’s hard to see how regulators were truly only looking at safety and not also at some form of efficacy, since there is no such thing as safety in the abstract, only safety relative to purpose for which someone is taking the drug.) Read More

Live Blogging from FDA in the 21st Century Conference, Panel 5: Major Issues in Drug Regulation

 [Live-blogging off-the-cuff, all errors, typos, etc, are my fault]

Geoffrey Levitt, Pfizer, Drug Safety Communication: The Evolving Environment

A drug by itself is just an object. Because of that fact it creates turf, governance. You must have effective processes for communicating accurate info.

Pharmacovigilance is the accuracy part. Spontaneous adverse event reports are flooding to companies. 600,000 of such reports go to Pfizer a year, with 2000 a day on avg. Each has to be classified, reported, and followed-up. If you mess up you get a warning letter. But it has limits: passive, haphazard, poor signal to noise value. Main value is generating safety signals to follow up on. But studies of that kind for follow-up are very expensive and competing with other possible safety studies and new drug development for funding.

For this reason there has been interest in active real-time drug safety monitoring, like Sentinel.

Once you have accurate and up to date info, how do you communicate it to the audiences that need it. It is not static info, dynamic and constantly changing, and often not fully baked. Timing is everything. That leads to governance. Who owns it? Which stakeholders get to drive it. In Wyeth v. Levine, S. Ct says drug sponsor owns the label, and is responsible at all times for content of the label, including safety info. In reality not that simple. Today there is a number of players outside health authority and drug sponsor who have emerged as powerful forces. Academic researchers, drug payers, detailers, and many others.  This is not by accident. One reason is emergence of vocal critics who have critiqued the sponsors ability to directly communicate. Claim that this is a form of collusion  of which Levitt does not agree.

Vioxx sparked a few important developments. IOM produced one of the most important recommendations that led to FDAAA especially as to post-market surveillance and power over the safety label. Balance of authority shifted from that authority towards FDA. FDA also began to be more proactive about communicating, even before fully confirmed and without participation of sponsor. Also put into place obligations to post clinical trial results on public website, so clinicaltrials.gov is born. In retrospect, that was the opening shot in a full barrage of FDA on clinical trial transparency. In Europe this had led to a drastic new policy of affirmatively publishing clinical study reports full-scale not just trial results.

Critics of the current model want to tear down the gate, and reinterpret data themselves by own standards. That may lead to different results and different conclusions. Will the erosion of the primacy of the sponsor and FDA lead to more truth or more confusion?

W. Nicholson Price II, Petrie-Flom Center, The Role of Innovation Policy in Pharmaceutical Manufacturing

M & M manufacturing is more precise than drug manufacturing. Poor innovation in drugs. 200 to 300 billion dollars a year are spent on drug manufacturing. This is very expensive and inefficient, contrary to the typical story that drug manufacturing is cheap. Drugs are way behind computers and electronics. Uses same processes as decades ago. A 20% reduction in manufacturing costs would lead to a gain annually 50 billion for consumers if paid back directly, or even more if invested in R & D. Connected also to drug shortages.

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Live Blogging from FDA in the 21st Century Conference, Panel 4: Timing Is Everything

Another great conference session this afternoon: “Timing Is Everything: Balancing Access and Uncertainty.”  This one was moderated by Jeff Skopek, with presentations by Shannon Gibson, Trudo Lemmens, and Efthimios Parasidis.

First, we heard from Gibson and Lemmens on “Overcoming ‘Premarket Syndrome,’” AKA the various problems associated with relying solely on premarket data for safety and efficacy determinations.  These problems include the fact that industry studies have been shown to be more likely to be biased in favor of demonstrating a positive result, and premarket studies also cannot really demonstrate how a product will be used in clinical practice.  Moreover, for niche market drugs (e.g., those for orphan indications or pharmacogenomics), which are becoming more and more popular, there are fewer patients available to serve as clinical trial subjects, thereby inherently limiting the data that may be generated prior to approval and increasing uncertainty around safety and effectiveness.

So what should we do? Develop an improved post-market research agenda, say Gibson and Lemmens, and explore “adaptive licensing,” by which they mean rendering regulatory decisions based on the entire body of evidence collected throughout a product’s life cycle.   They argue that drug access decisions should not be binary, but instead, should be incremental and continually reassessed based on new data, including data that becomes available after a drug has been initially made available to patients. They closed by pointing out the importance of data transparency at all points in drug regulation.

Next, we heard from Efthimios Parasidis on “Innovative Regulating as a Public Health Imperative.”  Parasidis focused on the ways in which FDA can leverage its existing post-market regulatory authorities granted under the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007, including requiring post-market studies and imposing Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy requirements (REMS).

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Live Blogging from FDA in the 21st Century Conference, Panel 3: Protecting the Public within Constitutional Limits

[Posted on behalf of W. Nicholson Price IIAcademic Fellow, The Petrie-Flom Center (with the disclaimer re: live blogging – see posts below)]

The third panel at the conference covered commercial speech protection and off-label drug promotion, in reaction to the Second Circuit’s December 12 case, United States v. Caronia.  Caronia was promoting Xyrem, approved for narcolepsy, for off-label uses, which is prohibited by FDA.  He was criminally charged and convicted, but the Second Circuit held this prohibition constitutionally suspect.

Leading off was Aaron Kesselheim.  Aaron started off describing the FDA’s prohibition on off-label promotion.  Off-label promotion prohibition is based on the requirement of substantial evidence for efficacy.  There are some safe-harbors, like distributing papers, but generally off-label promotion is prohibited because promotion drives prescription patterns, and off-label promotion for unapproved uses can have significant negative consequences.  FDA has negotiated many major settlements, totaling billions of dollars in recent years.  In this context, the Caronia decision is troubling from a public health point of view, even if not particularly surprising given the history of commercial free speech doctrine.

Aaron described four ways forward for the FDA after Caronia.  First, the government could rely more heavily on written materials as evidence, arguing that it is part of the label.  Second, the government could change the prosecutorial language, using speech as evidence of an attempt to misbrand, rather than prosecuting for speech; this might not be enough to fix the problem.  Third, the government could prosecute off-label promotion as false and misleading speech, but that requires hard case-by-case evaluations.  Fourth, the government could better argue that the Central Hudson test for commercial free speech is met.

Next, Chris Robertson also took Caronia as a jumping-off point, noting that Caronia was actually convicted of conspiracy to introduce a misbranded drug into interstate commerce – though the Second Circuit held he was actually convicted for his speech.  Caronia comes in the wake of robust First Amendment jurisprudence from the Supreme Court, including Citizens United, Sorrell, Stevens, Alvarez, and Fox v. FCC, and thus might be a harbinger of this reasoning spreading across the country.  In addition, the reasoning of Caronia could potentially apply equally to drugs with no approved use, and thus undermine the entire FDCA (since what is defined as a drug is determined by label claims).

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Live Blogging from FDA in the 21st Century Conference, Keynote: Deborah Autor

[Posted on behalf of Jeffrey SkopekAcademic Fellow, Petrie-Flom Center (with the same disclaimer about the off-the-cuff nature of live blogging)]

Deborah Autor, Deputy Commissioner for Global Regulatory Operations and Policy, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (for now – and soon headed off to Mylan), gave a keynote address exploring the ways in which the FDA’s mandate is increasingly difficult to achieve in an era of globalization.

In the first  part of the talk, she provided an overview of the FDA, discussing the extent to which FDA-regulated products infuse nearly every aspect of life.   For example, 20 cents of every consumer dollar spend in the US is on a good that is regulated by the FDA (for a total of over 2 trillion dollars).   Further, the FDA must achieve this monumental task at very lost cost to the public – just 8 dollars per person per year.

The second part of the talk identified various ways in which modernization (e.g., the speed of technology, communications, and commerce) and globalization (e.g., the complex global regulatory landscape) is making the FDA’s mandate more difficult.   Just as disease knows no borders, product safety and quality no longer know any borders.  For example, FDA regulated products originate from more than 150 countries, 130,000 importers, and 300, 000 foreign facilities.   And the number of FDA regulated shipments at over 300 ports has skyrocketed.  For example, 10-15% of food products are imported, 50% of medical devices are imported, and 40% of drugs are imported.  Further, the global supply chains are complex and hard to oversee, in part because the increased number of individuals, producers, and companies are geographically dispersed; and also because the new and hard to regulate distribution channel for products, such as the internet.

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Live Blogging from FDA in the 21st Century Conference, Panel 2: Preserving Public Trust and Demanding Accountability

By Michelle Meyer

[This is off-the-cuff live blogging, so apologies for any errors, typos, etc]

First up is Mark Lange from Eli Lilly (who notes that he is here in his personal capacity only!), speaking about “Data Transparency and the Role of the FDA.”

He prefaces his talk by noting that when he refers to “data,” he means raw, patient-level data from clinical trials. Most calls for the transparency of such data, he says, reflect a common theme about lack of trust in the pharmaceutical industry. So we might wonder: why doesn’t the pharmaceutical industry simply accede to that request and make their data available?

Mark notes that industry has several concerns. One important one pertains to data exclusivity. In several (if not all) markets, data exclusivity rights are premised on keeping the relevant data confidential, and posting it publicly would be deemed a waiver of those rights. In addition, data exclusivity prevents generic competitors from free riding, and publishing data could allow them to circumvent the very point of data exclusivity.

Moving to privacy concerns, Mark notes that research subjects’ understanding is that their data will be used for particular purposes and shared with regulators, but not be publicly posted on the Internet for anyone to do with whatever they want. Relatedly, there is the potential for interpretation of public data to be biased; research results may be over-interpreted and analyses may be flawed or even erroneous. Competitors might look for fairly trivial flaws the the data and try to use them to their advantage rather than sincerely trying to advance scientific progress and transparency.

Mark suggests, however, the choice between privacy and transparency is a false one. A better alternative is available — namely, for objective, expert regulators such as the FDA to receive and vet data in ways that address both audiences and both sets of concerns. The FDA is in fact already experienced in doing this. For example, it determines whether research demonstrates that a drug is safe and effective for a particular use through its marketing application approval mechanism, and it determines the accuracy and adequacy of the portrayal of research results in product labeling and product advertisements. And late last year, it was given responsibility for overseeing clinicaltrials.gov, which includes results from all pre-specified primary and secondary outcomes measures from nearly all clinical trials either conducted in the U.S. or intended to be used in support of an application for marketing approval in the U.S. This new responsibility, Mark suggests, could be a powerful tool, depending on how the FDA uses it. For instance, the FDA could exercise authority to monitor and enforce the absence of required results and the inclusion of false or misleading results data.

In concluding, Mark stresses that, when faced with requests for public access to patient-level trial data, we should consider the important role of regulators as trusted intermediaries who can balance competing concerns. Read More

Live Blogging from FDA in the 21st Century Conference, Panel 1: FDA in a Changing World

[This is off-the-cuff live blogging, so apologies for any errors, typos, etc]

Panel 1: FDA in a Changing World: Lewis Grossman, Ted Ruger, Barbara Evans, moderated by Holly Fernandez Lynch

Lewis Grossman, FDA in the Age of the Empowered Consumer

Begins his analysis by comparing a hypothetical consumer in 1960 and today.

Consumer was passive. Today’s consumer is active, more unmediated choice, more direct citizen involvement.

Why the change? 1970 was the decade of advocacy, culminating in 1972 Patient’s Bill of Rights from AMA. Central them was informed consent and thus complete information from physician.

1998 saw disruption of WebMd and now even more disrupted by web search technology which is how most patients get there info.

Food: 1966, recipe standards. Relatively little variety and consumer choice. Very little info on  nutrition, “batman white bread.” Turning point was 1969 White House conference that led to more choice and more info.

Health clams as the portal where 1st Amendment law entered into FDA law. The image of the intelligent consumer who need not be shielded from information.

Changes in standard by which FDA decided if something was misleading. Until 2002 unsure if reasonable or gullible consumer standard. In 2002 for food FDA chose the reasonable consumer standard.

Liberal and conservatives got scrambled on these matters in interesting ways.

Also a revolution in advertising, leading to revolution of patient’s relationship to his or her drugs.

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Live Blogging from FDA in the 21st Century Conference – Peter Barton Hutt’s Plenary

We’re well on our way into the Petrie-Flom Center’s Annual Conference, FDA in the 21st Century, and we’ll be live blogging the sessions today and tomorrow here at Bill of Health.

Today’s sessions opened with a fantastic plenary from Peter Barton Hutt, who’s had more than five decades of experience with Food and Drug Law, including 4 years as Chief Counsel to the FDA.

Peter addressed a wide variety of topics in his talk on “Historical Themes and Developments Over the Past 50 Years.”

1.    FDA Management

Peter discussed various management approaches utilized by different FDA commissioners over the years, from Commissioner Edwards in the 1970s who ran the agency like a management consultant, meeting with every Center every week, to Commissioner McClellan who viewed his post through the lens of an economist.  Different management styles have been needed as the agency has grown tremendously, from 6,500 employees in 1976 to a $4 billion appropriation and more than 12,000 employees today.  As a result of that growth, the Commissioner and Center directors necessarily know less and less about what the organization is doing.  This creates tremendous possibilities for inconsistencies, mistakes, and loss of control, and ultimately, policy is now made from the bottom-up.

2.    Rulemaking

Peter described the fundamental shift in FDA’s approach to rulemaking over its history.  Before 1970, the agency relied heavily on a combination of guidance and litigation, primarily as a result of the fact that the four general counsels in that role from 1906 to 1971 were all litigators, and viewed lawsuits as the appropriate way to develop government policy.  It became clear in the 1970s that this approach couldn’t work for everything, and as a result, the agency reinterpreted an obscure provision of the Act allowing it to issue regulations for “efficient enforcement” of the law to permit substantive rulemaking, rather than just procedural rules.   This allowed huge programs to be created administratively, from nutritional labeling to OTC drug review to FOIA regulations.  Equally important was FDA’s approach to developing lengthy explanatory preambles to its regulations.

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Tobacco and Dietary Supplements – The Role of the FDA

By Joanna Sax

Thank you for inviting me to blog.  Later this week, I’ll be attending Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Annual Conference on the FDA in the 21st Century.  My paper/presentation addresses the role of the FDA in the regulation of dietary supplements.  By way of preview, my paper compares similarities between the dietary supplement industry and tobacco.  Both industries have successfully avoided heavy regulation by the FDA. 

A tension exists between the personal choice/autonomy to use a variety of dietary supplements with the actual or potential health danger.  With the current light-handed regulation, costs for dietary supplements are much lower than they would be if they had to be approved by the FDA prior to market.  Some consumers believe that if a product says it is ‘natural’ then it must be safe.  This, however, is not necessarily true.  Would you eat any wild plant or mushroom just because it is natural?  I hope not.  In recent years, a number of adverse events, including death, have been shown to be correlated or caused by use of dietary supplements. 

It seems that some of the tactics employed by the tobacco industry to avoid regulation are similar to tactics employed by the dietary supplement industry.  My paper/presentation addresses what lessons we can learn from the tobacco industry to analyze if the FDA should be granted the authority to increase the regulation of the dietary supplement industry.  I hope to see you all in Boston.