Category: Pharmaceuticals

Congressmen Express Concern About Proposed Changes to Generic Drug Labeling Rules

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By Bob Bohrer

I have previously posted on pharmaceuticalpolicy.blogspot.com about the FDA’s proposed change to the rules for generic drug labels and an estimate of the liability costs that might be incurred by the generic drug industry as a result of the proposed change.  The Generic Pharmaceutical Manufactuer’s Association lobbying efforts appear to have motivated Congressmen Steve Israel (D-NY) and Timothy Bishop (D-NY) to draft a letter to the FDA requesting changes to the proposed rule.  A copy of the Congressmen’s letter to the FDA can be downloaded through this link.

Upcoming Event: Emerging Issues and New Frontiers in FDA Regulation

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lab_colored_beakers_slideEmerging Issues and New Frontiers for FDA Regulation

October 20, 2014 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM

Alston & Bird, The Atlantic Building, 950 F Street, NW, Washington, DC 20004-1404

Registration is now open online. A limited number of free seats are available to Harvard affiliates. For more information or to request a seat, please email us at petrie-flom@law.harvard.edu by October 7th.

Please join the Food and Drug Law Institute and the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School for an academic symposium on cutting-edge legal and regulatory issues facing FDA.  Leading academics will present papers on mobile health, stem cells, personalized medicine, and other novel medical product issues, as well as food regulation.  Papers will be available to registered attendees in advance, and will be published in an upcoming issue of the Food and Drug Law Journal.

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What’s Next If the FDA Holds the Line on Social Media?

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By Kate Greenwood
[Cross-posted at Health Reform Watch]

Earlier this week, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it was reopening the comment periods for the two draft guidances on the use of social media to promote prescription drugs and medical devices that it released in June:  Internet/Social Media Platforms with Character Space Limitations: Presenting Risk and Benefit Information for Prescription Drugs and Medical Devices and Internet/Social Media Platforms: Correcting Independent Third-Party Misinformation About Prescription Drugs and Medical Devices. Both guidances have drawn criticism from industry and observers, with the FDA being charged with, in the words of Pharmaguy at the Pharma Marketing Blog, “not being technically savvy enough to understand the nuances of social media and search engine advertising.”

In the draft guidance on social media platforms with character space limitations, such as Twitter and sponsored links on Google and Yahoo, the FDA states that “if a firm chooses to make a product benefit claim, the firm should also incorporate risk information within the same character-space-limited communication.” The draft guidance would allow companies to limit the risks that are presented within a character-and-space-limited communication to those that are the most serious, as long as the communication also includes a direct hyperlink to a destination (for example, a landing page) that is devoted exclusively to a complete discussion of the product’s risks. The FDA emphasizes in the draft guidance that “[i]f an accurate and balanced presentation of both risks and benefits is not possible within the constraints of the platform, then the firm should reconsider using that platform for the intended promotional message (other than for permitted reminder promotion).”  In the first round of comments, PhRMA commented that the amount of information that companies are required to include in a single communication “would make the use of Twitter and comparable platforms impossible in all but the rarest cases.” With regard to sponsored links, PhRMA also noted that the guidance assumes that advertisers have more control than they in fact do over “the appearance – and order of appearance – of information on such platforms.”

It will be interesting to see whether and how the FDA responds to these comments, as well as to any additional comments filed during the period that comments are reopened, which ends on October 29th. If the agency holds the line (as I think it should) and continues to require that companies provide at least some balance between risks and benefits in all advertising and labeling, regardless of platform, companies will no doubt (continue) to look for alternatives.  Read More

9/29/14: HLS Health Law Workshop with Benjamin Roin

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HLS Health Law Workshop: Benjamin Roin
September 29, 2014 5:00 PM
Griswold Hall, Room 110 (Harvard Law School)
1525 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA [Map here.]

Download the Paper: Solving the Problem of New Uses by Creating Incentives for Private Industry to Repurpose Off-Patent Drugs

Benjamin N. Roin is Assistant Professor of Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and an associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. From 2010 to 2014, as a faculty member at Harvard Law School, Ben was Faculty Co-Director of the Petrie-Flom Center. Ben’s work focuses on entrepreneurship, intellectual property, and innovation policy.  His primary areas of research are patent law and biopharmaceutical innovation.

10/20/14: Emerging Issues and New Frontiers for FDA Regulation

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

lab_colored_beakers_slideEmerging Issues and New Frontiers for FDA Regulation

October 20, 2014 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM

Alston & Bird, The Atlantic Building, 950 F Street, NW, Washington, DC 20004-1404

Symposium co-sponsored by the Food and Drug Law Institute (FDLI) and the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.

Please join the Food and Drug Law Institute and the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School for an academic symposium on cutting-edge legal and regulatory issues facing FDA.  Leading academics will present papers on mobile health, stem cells, personalized medicine, and other novel medical product issues, as well as food regulation.  Papers will be available to registered attendees in advance, and will be published in an upcoming issue of the Food and Drug Law Journal.

Registration is now open online. A limited number of free seats are available to Harvard affiliates. For more information or to request a seat, please email us at petrie-flom@law.harvard.edu.

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9/22/14: HLS Health Law Workshop with Thomas McGuire

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HLS Health Law Workshop: Thomas McGuire
September 22, 2014 5:00 PM
Griswold Hall, Room 110 (Harvard Law School)
1525 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA [Map here.]

Download the Paper: Do ‘Reverse Payment’ Settlements of Brand-Generic Patent Disputes in the Pharmaceutical Industry Constitute an Anticompetitve Pay for Delay?

Thomas G. McGuire, PhD, is a professor of health economics in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on the design and impact of health care payment systems, the economics of health care disparities, and the economics of mental health policy. Dr. McGuire has contributed to the theory of physician, hospital, and health plan payment. His research on health care disparities includes developing approaches to defining and measuring disparities, and study of the theory and measurement of provider discrimination. For more than 30 years, Dr. McGuire has conducted academic and policy research on the economics of mental health.

Live Blogging: Post-Trial Responsibilities Conference, Session 2

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By Zachary Shapiro

Hello from the Post-Trial Responsibilities conference! I will be live blogging session 2: where speakers will be providing important perspectives on PTA. Barbra Bierer is monitoring the discussion.

We started with Richard Klein calling in from FDA:

Richard is talking about post-trial responsibilities. He points out that there is a justice issue here with ensuring access to health care and up to date interventions. He points out that while the FDA can encourage Post-Trial Access (PTA), it has no authority to require or ensure it. He points to moral authority, rather than legal. Foreign trials, however, are a different story, as the FDA has sway over protocol applications that are submitted in the US. Richard begins highlighting some specific considerations for protocol drafters and IRBs: particularly focusing on determining monitoring plans, as well as figuring out financial responsibilities for the provision of PTA.

He moves on to highlight that there is more of a moral obligation than a legal obligation. FDA is supportive of the provision of PTA. He believes that enthusiasm must be tempered, as there are situations when PTA is not appropriate. These include studies that have significant safety concerns, studies of bio-markers as well as validation studies that do not specifically examine safety and effectiveness. There are also situations where PTA is simply not feasible, particularly if additional drugs do not exist (one thinks of the recent Ebola treatment), if there is insufficient safety data, or if there is no practical capacity or resources to provide safety monitoring. We must also be aware of financial limitations, especially for start-up biotech firms that might not have deep pockets. Read More

Live Blogging: Post-Trial Responsibilities Conference, Session 1

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By Holly Fernandez Lynch

Today, the Multi-Regional Clinical Trials Center (MRCT) at Harvard University and the Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School are co-hosting a daylong conference on “Post-Trial Responsibilities: Ethics and Implementation.”  We’ll be live blogging the conference here at Bill of Health, and video/slides from the conference will be available soon.

The conference was kicked off by Mark Barnes, co-director of MRCT, who pointed to two key statements of ethics that refer to post-trial responsibilities, the Declaration of Helsinki’s Paragraph 34 (DoH) – which Mark referred to as “mysterious,” as it could not in practice mean what it literally says – and the Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences Guideline 10 (CIOMS).

Mark went on to describe the wide spectrum of issues that may be encapsulated in the simple phrase “post-trial access” – for example, over what period of time is access provided, is it provided for chronic diseases or only transient conditions, is it necessary only till a patient is stabilized or for longer, is it a lifetime commitment, does it apply only to research subjects themselves or broader research communities?  How much evidence should we demand of benefit before imposing post-trial responsibilities?  Exactly what should be provided – only the study drug, whatever was offered to the control group, other supportive care?  Must post-trial access be free of charge?  What about improved infrastructure, knowledge, and other benefits as components of post-trial access?  Our goal for the day will be to clarify the ways in which the Declaration of Helsinki, the CIOMS guidelines, and other ethical standards and regulatory requirements require additional guidance for practical application to the complex real-life circumstances of clinical trials.

The conference’s first panel – “Setting the Stage” – had the objective of introducing current ethical and regulatory approaches, as well as key controversies.  The panel was kicked off by Christine Grady (NIH), who gave a talk on the ethics of post-trial responsibilities, including history, models, agreements, and controversies.  Christine explained that compared to the very clear articulation of researchers’ responsibilities before and during a trial, they have very little guidance on what should happen when a trial is over.  Indeed, they had no guidance whatsoever until the 1990s, when there was both an upsurge in international collaborative research, and HIV research more specifically.  In that context, new efforts cropped up to minimize the possibility of exploitation in international research, including development of the concepts of responsiveness to local needs and reasonable availability of research benefits, as well as capacity building, collaboration, and community engagement. Read More

NYULMC: Compassionate Use Could Impact Long-Term Medical Benefits

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A new working group at the NYU Langone Medical Center has issued preliminary findings from their studies on the research ethics of compassionate use. Among their findings include:

  • Biotechnology companies have no legal or regulatory obligation to provide access to unapproved treatments on the grounds of compassionate use. Some companies allow access under the guidance of well thought out policies; some companies decline to allow access; some companies grant access but have no set guidelines; and some companies change their practices midstream as a result of public pressure. This lack of uniform policy is confusing to those seeking unapproved treatments.
  • Contrary to widespread perception, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is not an obstacle to those seeking compassionate use. In fact, the FDA almost always defers to the company that is developing the unapproved treatment to decide whether to grant compassionate use acces.
  • The “human impulse” to help patients facing insurmountable odds motivates both the general public’s support for compassionate use and so-called “right to try” laws to help gain access to unapproved treatments. However, increasing access to unapproved therapies may prove detrimental in the long run to longstanding and effective research and clinical trial systems through which interventions are proven effective and safe, and given regulatory approval.

You can learn more about the working group and read more of their findings here.

Tomorrow: Post-Trial Responsibilities Conference

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pills_genericvariety_slidePost-Trial Responsibilities: Ethics and Implementation

Thursday, September 18, 2014 7:30 AM – 5:30 PM

Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East AB, Harvard Law School, 1585 Massachusetts Ave.

The conference is free and open to the public, but due to limited seating, registration is required to attend. Please register here.

The term “post-trial access” is used broadly to connote a wide range of possibilities for providing continued access to study interventions (and potentially other care) once a trial is over, or a subject’s participation has ended.  For the purposes of this conference, we will focus discussions on the following:

  1. Continued access to study intervention(s) and/or other care for people who were enrolled in the clinical trial and were benefiting (whether between the end of the trial and product approval or indefinitely)
  2. Provision of the study intervention(s) and/or other care to people who were enrolled in the clinical trial but did not get the intervention and would like to try it (whether between the end of the trial and product approval or indefinitely)
  3. Provision of the study intervention, other care, or other resources to the community in which the trial was conducted

The full background, conference objectives, and agenda are now available on our website. 

Cosponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and the Multi-Regional Clinical Trials Center at Harvard University. This event is also supported by the Oswald DeN. Cammann Fund.