Recent Developments in Off-Label Promotion

By Chris Robertson

July has been a busy month for those following the controversy around off-label promotion of drugs and devices.  As many on this blog know, federal law requires that prior to marketing any drug or device, companies must prove to the FDA’s satisfaction that it is safe and effective for all intended uses.  If the company reveals that it intends unapproved uses,  sales of the drug or device are illegal.  Nonetheless, physicians can prescribe “off-label,” and companies are free to sell for those known-but-not-intended purposes.

This carefully-wrought policy may seem convoluted, but it serves important epistemic and economic purposes, as I have argued elsewhere.  This month, I have a new draft paper on SSRN, assessing recent assertions of a First Amendment right to promote for uses not approved by the FDA, and consider whether such a right would be equally applicable to drugs that have no FDA-approved label at all. I worry that the entire pre-market approval regime may be at stake. Feedback on that intentionally-provocative analysis is quite welcome.

On Wednesday, two medical device company executives, were convicted of promoting a product “to deliver steroid medications to patients’ sinuses, though it was only approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for keeping sinuses open.”  The prosecutors thought the case was particularly egregious, because the company had intended the broader use to deliver medicine all along, but sought to mislead the FDA, denying it the chance review the safety and efficacy of the real intended use.  The jury instructions and verdict form  are particularly interesting, to see how the government’s trial strategy avoids the holding of a Second Circuit case of Caronia, which overturned a conviction on First Amendment grounds.  I’ll return with some analysis later. Read More

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 June. The selections feature topics ranging from lessons from the history of randomized controlled trials, to the prevalence and predictors of generic drug skepticism among physicians, to the availability and dissemination of results from FDA-mandated post-approval studies of medical devices. A full posting of abstracts/summaries of these articles may be found on our website.

  1. Bothwell LE, Greene JA, Podolsky SH, Jones DS. Assessing the Gold Standard–Lessons from the History of RCTs. N Engl J Med. 2016;374(22):2175-81.
  2. Gellad WF, Good CB. Prescription of Brand-Name Medications When Generic Alternatives Are Available-Patently Unfair. JAMA Intern Med. 2016 Jun 27. [Epub ahead of print]
  3. Hwang TJ, Sokolov E, Franklin JM,  Kesselheim AS. Comparison of rates of safety issues and reporting of trial outcomes for medical devices approved in the European Union and United States: cohort study. BMJ. 2016;353:i3323.
  4. Ioannidis JP. Why Most Clinical Research Is Not Useful. PLoS Med. 2016;13(6):e1002049.
  5. Kesselheim AS, Gagne JJ, Eddings W, Franklin JM, Ross KM, Fulchino LA, Campbell EG. Prevalence and Predictors of Generic Drug Skepticism Among Physicians: Results of a National Survey. JAMA Intern Med. 2016;176(6):845-7.
  6. Kesselheim AS, Gagne JJ, Franklin JM, Eddings W, Fulchino LA, Avorn J, Campbell EG. Variations in Patients’ Perceptions and Use of Generic Drugs: Results of a National Survey. J Gen Intern Med. 2016;31(6):609-14.
  7. Luo J, Seeger JD, Donneyong M, Gagne JJ, Avorn J, Kesselheim AS. Effect of Generic Competition on Atorvastatin Prescribing and Patients’ Out-of-Pocket Spending. JAMA Intern Med. 2016 Jun 27. [Epub ahead of print]
  8. Moore TJ, Furberg CD, Mattison DR, Cohen MR. Completeness of serious adverse drug event reports received by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2014. Pharmacoepidemiol Drug Saf. 2016 Jun;25(6):713-8.
  9. Quesada O, Yang E, Redberg RF. Availability and Dissemination of Results From US Food and Drug Administration-Mandated Postapproval Studies for Medical Devices. JAMA Intern Med. 2016 Jun 27. [Epub ahead of print]
  10. Sarpatwari A, Kesselheim AS. Navigating the Dermatological Drug Cost Curve. JAMA. 2016;315(24):2724-5.
  11. Sarpatwari A, Avorn J, Kesselheim AS. State Initiatives to Control Medication Costs–Can Transparency Legislation Help? N Engl J Med. 2016;374(24):2301-4.
  12. Schwartz LM, Woloshin S, Zheng E, Tse T, Zarin DA. ClinicalTrials.gov and Drugs@FDA: A Comparison of Results Reporting for New Drug Approval Trials. Ann Intern Med. 2016 Jun 14. [Epub ahead of print]

New Resource: BPCIA Legislative History Documents

The Petrie-Flom Center is pleased to announce the availability of a new resource on its website: the legislative history of the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act (BPCIA).  The BPCIA, passed as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), created a pathway for the approval of biosimilar products and awarded innovator biologic companies twelve years of exclusivity for their products.  Modeled after the Hatch-Waxman Act of 1984, which established our system of generic small-molecule drug approvals while simultaneously creating a five-year period of exclusivity for new drugs, consideration of the BPCIA’s history is often lost in the discussion over the ACA’s history as a whole.  This resource selects only those documents relating to the BPCIA and may thus prove particularly useful for scholars of FDA law.

This new resource comes at an opportune time, as the courts and Congress have both turned their focus to the provisions of the BPCIA.  In 2015, the Federal Circuit issued a divided opinion interpreting the BPCIA’s instructions to biosimilar and innovator drug sponsors, and that opinion has now been appealed to the Supreme Court.  Just last month, the Justices called for the views of the Solicitor General on this question, a step which may significantly increase the likelihood of an eventual cert grant.  At the same time, several members of Congress have introduced a bill that would decrease the BPCIA’s grant of exclusivity from twelve years to seven years, bringing it more in line with the five-year period in the Hatch-Waxman Act or seven-year period in the Orphan Drug Act.  The twelve-year period of exclusivity may have been the most contentious aspect of the BPCIA as passed, with even the FTC arguing strongly against such a lengthy period at the time.

Members of the public may also be interested in an article written by Professor Erika Lietzan and colleagues providing an excellent analysis of the BPCIA’s legislative history.

The Catch-22 of Bayh-Dole March-In Rights

By Rachel Sachs

Earlier today, the NIH rejected a request filed by consumer groups including Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) to exercise the government’s march-in rights on an expensive prostate cancer drug, Xtandi.  Xtandi costs upwards of $129,000 per year, and KEI had asked the government to exercise its rights under the Bayh-Dole Act, which specifies a range of conditions under which the government may require a patentholder to grant licenses on reasonable terms to others to practice the patent.  Specifically, the government may require such a license where “action is necessary to alleviate health or safety needs which are not reasonably satisfied,” 35 U.S.C. § 203(a)(2), or where the benefits of the invention are not being made “available to the public on reasonable terms,” 35 U.S.C. § 201(f).

For some time now, there has been debate over the question of whether high prices for pharmaceuticals are a sufficient trigger to invoke the use of march-in rights under these clauses of the statute.  I don’t take a position on that question here.  Instead, I want to ask whose responsibility it is to decide that question.  Congress has the legal right to do so, but it seems unwilling or unable to.  The agencies in question have recently declined to, even assuming they have the power to interpret the statute in that way.  And so we might look to the courts.  But there’s a puzzle here: it’s not clear that anyone can ask a court to decide whether high prices meet the statutory requirements unless an agency actually decides that high prices meet the statutory requirements.

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Thoughtful CREATES Act May Help Speed Generic Drug Approvals

By Rachel Sachs

Earlier this week, a bipartisan group of Senators introduced the Creating and Restoring Equal Access to Equivalent Samples (CREATES) Act, a bill designed to speed generic drug approvals (and thus lower drug costs) by removing a delaying tactic some branded drug companies use to impede the generic approval process.  Essentially, branded drug companies sometimes refuse to sell samples of their drugs to generic companies who want to come to market, preventing them (for at least a time) from performing the necessary bioequivalence testing and extending their market dominance.  Sometimes companies try to hide behind a regulatory program, Risk Evaluation or Mitigation Strategies (REMS), in claiming that they legally cannot provide such access.  Other times, such as in Martin Shkreli’s case, no such excuse exists and the company simply refuses to provide access.

These delaying tactics have received substantial attention from both scholars (Jordan Paradise’s work can be found here) and lawmakers.  This is Congress’ third attempt at addressing the situation, although as Ed Silverman helpfully notes at Pharmalot, the previous attempts would have only dealt with REMS delays, not Shkreli-like closed distribution systems.  By contrast, the CREATES Act would require brand-name companies to provide access to samples of their drugs, whether subject to a REMS or not, on “commercially reasonable, market-based terms” or face potential civil action from the generic drug company in question.  There’s already been a lot of commentary on the bill, including a particularly helpful blog post from Geoffrey Manne providing background on REMS abuses and on why antitrust law has not sufficed to solve the problem.  Here, I want to add two points that I haven’t yet seen in the discussion: one about drug shortages and another about remedies.

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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 May. The selections feature topics ranging from a review of progress in the fight against multidrug-resistant bacteria, to the role regulators can play in increasing the affordability of drugs, to an assessment of the strength of the surrogate-survival relationship for cancer drugs approved on the basis of surrogate endpoints. A full posting of abstracts/summaries of these articles may be found on our website.

  1. Deak D, Outterson K, Powers JH, Kesselheim AS. Progress in the Fight Against Multidrug-Resistant Bacteria? A Review of U.S. Food and Drug Administration-Approved Antibiotics, 2010-2015. Ann Intern Med. 2016 May 31. [Epub ahead of print]
  2. Eichler HG, Hurts H, Broich K, Rasi G. Drug Regulation and Pricing–Can Regulators Influence Affordability? New Engl J Med. 2016 May 12;374(19):1807-9.
  3. Hey SP, Weijer C. What questions can a placebo answer? Monash Bioeth Rev. 2016 May 17. [Epub ahead of print]
  4. Kapczynski A, Kesselheim AS. ‘Government Patent Use’: A Legal Approach To Reducing Drug Spending. Health Aff. 2016 May 1;35(5):791-7.
  5. Kim C, Prasad V. Strength of Validation for Surrogate End Points Used in the US Food and Drug Administration’s Approval of Oncology Drugs. Mayo Clin Proc. 2016 May 10. [Epub ahead of print]
  6. Outterson K, McDonnell A. Funding Antibiotic Innovation With Vouchers: Recommendations On How To Strengthen A Flawed Incentive Policy. Health Aff. 2016 May 1;35(5):784-90.
  7. Patel MS, Day SC, Halpern SD, Hanson CW, Martinez JR, Honeywell S Jr, Volpp KG. Generic Medication Prescription Rates After Health System-Wide Redesign of Default Options Within the Electronic Health Record. JAMA Intern Med. 2016 May 9. [Epub ahead of print]
  8. Yeh JS, Franklin JM, Avorn J, Landon J, Kesselheim AS. Association of Industry Payments to Physicians With the Prescribing of Brand-name Statins in Massachusetts. JAMA Intern Med. 2016 May 9. [Epub ahead of print]

Our Current Pharmaceutical Payment System Isn’t Neutral

By Rachel Sachs

Last week, former Pfizer Global R&D head John LaMattina wrote another of his columns for Forbes, this one on the subject of pay-for-performance deals for pharmaceuticals.  These deals, in which insurers contract with pharmaceutical companies to pay for drugs based on how well they perform in practice, are becoming more common as the public conversation over drug prices escalates (examples here, here, and here).  There are many interesting questions around pay-for-performance deals, but LaMattina closes his column with a focus on one: their impact on the direction of pharmaceutical R&D.

Specifically, LaMattina argues: “Biopharmaceutical companies will closely watch how pay-for-performance evolves. Should payers become overly enthralled with rebates and continue to raise the bar, companies could move their R&D efforts into areas where a drug’s impact can be easily defined and measured. In such an environment, therapeutic areas like depression and obesity could give way to diseases like psoriasis or rare diseases where patient advocacy remains strong. In its efforts to rein in costs, payers might unwittingly force R&D out of areas where new drugs are still needed. That would be unfortunate.”

LaMattina is exactly right in one sense – and highly misleading in another.  First, underlying LaMattina’s argument is a critical claim that the way in which drugs are paid for affects the types of drugs that are developed.  This is absolutely right.  Although it may be perfectly obvious to some, as someone who just wrote a 25,000 word article on this very topic (oh hi, SSRN), I can attest that recognition of this idea is too often absent from the legal literature.  We largely focus on prescription drug insurance and payment as a way to encourage access to medications that already exist, but we ignore its effects on the types of drugs that are produced in the first place.

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Legal Dimensions of Big Data in the Health and Life Sciences

By Timo Minssen

Please find below my welcome speech at last-weeks mini-symposium on “Legal dimensions of Big Data in the Health and Life Sciences From Intellectual Property Rights and Global Pandemics to Privacy and Ethics at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH).  The event was organized by our Global Genes –Local Concerns project, with support from the UCPH Excellence Programme for Interdisciplinary Research.

The symposium, which was inspired by the wonderful recent  PFC & Berkman Center Big Data conference,  featured enlightening speeches by former PFC fellows Nicholson Price on incentives for the development of black box personalized medicine and Jeff Skopek on privacy issues. In addition we were lucky to have Peter Yu speaking on “Big Data, Intellectual Property and Global Pandemics” and Michael J. Madison on Big Data and Commons Challenges”. The presentations and recordings of the session will soon be made available on our Center’s webpage.

Thanks everybody for your dedication, inspiration, great presentations and an exciting panel discussion.

“Legal Dimensions of Big Data in the Health and Life Sciences – From Intellectual Property Rights and Global Pandemics to Privacy and Ethics”

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Separating sheep from goats- a European view on the patent eligibility of biomedical diagnostic methods

By Timo Minssen

New publication on the patentability of biomedical diagnostics out:

Abstract: This brief comment complements Dan Burk’s excellent paper ( Dolly and Alice, J Law and the Biosciences (2015), 1–21, doi:10.1093/jlb/lsv042 ) by providing a very brief summary of the European approach regarding patents on medical diagnostic methods. This serves as the basis for a comparative discussion of the current US approach and its’ impact on biomedical innovation. We are concerned that unless the Supreme Court clarifies its two-part test and adopts a more holistic interpretation of the eligibility-test, global standards for medical diagnostic patents will diverge to the detriment of advanced therapies and ultimately patients worldwide. In case that the current US eligibility doctrine prevails without further Supreme Court clarification, we highlight the need for developing a more flexible, well-calibrated system for alternative and complementary forms of drug development incentives. In addition to a better-funded and well-administered prize system (an interesting option for some areas of diagnostics that we did not elaborate upon), our paper highlights the need for an improved and more flexible system for regulatory exclusivities in this sector.

Citation: Separating sheep from goats: a European view on the patent eligibility of biomedical diagnostic methods Timo Minssen; Robert M. Schwartz Journal of Law and the Biosciences 2016; doi: 10.1093/jlb/lsw019

 

 

 

 

State Drug Price Cap Laws: How Do They Work?

By Rachel Sachs

Two weeks ago, I blogged here about various state bills designed to encourage transparency in the pharmaceutical industry, by requiring companies to disclose information about their research & development costs, marketing expenses, and prices charged to different purchasers. In that post, I glossed over the state initiatives to cap drug prices directly, but as these initiatives have been more recently in the news, I want to focus on them here and ask a basic question: can someone explain to me how they would work?

Let’s back up. Two states, California and Ohio, are considering ballot initiatives that propose to cap what drug manufacturers can charge to public payers in the state (such as Medicaid).  The texts of the initiatives are nearly identical, with a few state-specific differences in the enumeration of entities eligible to pay the capped price.  As clearly stated in a comprehensive POLITICO article earlier this week by Nancy Cook and Sarah Karlin-Smith, the initiatives “would require the state to pay no more for prescription drugs than the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs — one of the few federal agencies allowed to negotiate drug prices.”

We can and should debate whether price caps like these are a good idea, as a policy matter, and the Cook & Karlin-Smith piece canvasses a number of the arguments on both sides.  But first, we should be clear that the laws we’re enacting can actually accomplish their intended purpose.  And if they can’t, we should acknowledge that publicly.  I see at least two primary obstacles to the implementation of these price cap initiatives, and since they’ve largely been absent from the public discussion, it’s useful to state them explicitly.

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