By Laura Karas
Now that 2020 has come to a close, it’s worth taking stock of the progress the United States has made during the last year with respect to biosimilars, pharmaceutical therapies that are highly similar to a reference biologic product and possess no clinically meaningful differences.
By Ryan Knox and Gregory Curfman
Since receiving FDA approval for Humira® (adalimumab) in 2002, AbbVie, the drug’s manufacturer, has filed hundreds of submissions to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for secondary patents – almost half of which were filed after 2014, just two years before the expiration of its core patent.
These patents were largely directed to methods of use and potential formulation changes, but they did not include claims that affect the clinical efficacy of the biologic, which is used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, and psoriasis, among other conditions. Instead, the purpose of the secondary patent filings was to assemble a thicket of patents, 132 in all, to prohibit competition from biosimilar companies.
And so far, the strategy has worked. AbbVie remains the sole U.S. manufacturer of the biologic, and has successfully defended its domain: in June 2020, a federal district court judge in Chicago dismissed an antitrust lawsuit against AbbVie.
By Abe Sutton
While the Most Favored Nation (MFN) Interim Final Rule (IFR) advances a well-calibrated policy to standardize pharmaceutical prices across developed nations, procedurally, its issuance was a mistake.
The Trump administration would have been wiser to issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for two reasons: first, an NPRM would have circumvented some of the procedural vulnerabilities of the IFR. And second, had the Trump administration issued an NPRM, President-Elect Biden’s team would have faced significant pressure to finalize the policy.
In this post, I touch on what MFN is, examine why the interim final rule is legally vulnerable, explore why the Biden team likely would have adopted the policy had an NPRM been issued, and explain how industry should think about this situation.
By Ameet Sarpatwari, Beatrice Brown, Neeraj Patel, 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, policy analyses, and editorials on health law and policy issues.
Below are the citations for papers identified from the month of September. The selections feature topics ranging from commentaries on political pressures and questions of integrity facing the FDA, to a critique of the financial incentive structure for antibiotic development, to an estimation of how much NHS England would spend if it paid U.S. Medicare Part D prices. A full posting of abstracts/summaries of these articles may be found on our website.
By Ameet Sarpatwari, Beatrice Brown, Neeraj Patel, 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, policy analyses, and editorials on health law and policy issues.
Below are the citations for papers identified from the month of August. The selections feature topics ranging from a commentary on the need for rigorous scientific evaluation of COVID-19 vaccine candidates in the face of political and economic pressures, to an evaluation of patients’ and pharmacists’ experiences with pill appearance changes, to an examination of the extent and cost of potentially inappropriate prescription drug prescriptions for older adults. A full posting of abstracts/summaries of these articles may be found on our website.
By Ameet Sarpatwari, Beatrice Brown, Neeraj Patel, and Aaron S. Kesselheim
Each month, members of the Program On Regulation, Therapeutics, And Law (PORTAL) go through recent, peer-reviewed medical literature to identify interesting empirical studies, policy analyses, and editorials on health law and policy issues.
Below are the citations for papers identified from the month of July. The selections feature topics ranging from an assessment of excess prescription drug spending associated with delayed generic competition, to an analysis of the differences between the use of advisories by drug regulatory bodies in various countries, to a commentary on the pitfalls of using SSR Health data for estimating net prescription drug spending. A full posting of abstracts/summaries of these articles may be found on our website.
By Beatrice Brown and Benjamin Rome
Prescription drug spending in the U.S. remains high and continues to rise, accounting for about 20% of national health expenditures. While generic competition is crucial for reducing drug prices, brand-name drug manufacturers can utilize several strategies to delay such competition by increasing the length of market exclusivity for their drugs.
Although brand-name drugs only account for 18% of all prescriptions filled, they comprise 78% of total drug spending. By contrast, equally-effective, interchangeable generic drugs can offer discounts of up to 80% off their brand-name drug counterparts.
Generic competitors can only be introduced after brand-name drugs have completed their period of market exclusivity, which typically lasts 12-16 years and is largely determined by the patents covering the drug. Brand-name pharmaceutical manufacturers have strong financial incentives to prolong this market exclusivity period and delay entry of generic products.
By Ameet Sarpatwari, Charlie Lee, Frazer Tessema, 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, policy analyses, and editorials on pharmaceutical law and policy.
Below are links to the papers identified from the month of May. The selections feature topics ranging from the association between clinical benefit of approved cancer drugs and their prices in the U.S. and Europe, to an assessment of how commercial health plans cover biosimilars relative to their reference products, to a commentary on how children should be included in clinical trials evaluating COVID-19 therapies. A full posting of abstracts/summaries of these articles can be found on our website.
Interested in learning more about pharmaceutical policy? Curious about the role of the FDA in ensure safe and effective drugs reach the market? Wondering why drug prices are so high in the US? Readers of my prior posts may enjoy learning more about these topics!
Check out a free HarvardX online course, “The FDA and Prescription Drugs: Current Controversies in Context,” put together by Petrie-Flom Center affiliates Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, Dr. Ameet Sarpatwari, Dr. Jonathan Darrow, and many others, that is now open for enrollment. (Disclosure: I did not play any role in the development or making of the course, but I am serving as a teaching assistant/discussion moderator for the course). Read More
With Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) announcing that she was forming a Presidential exploratory committee, I suppose that means the 2020 Democratic Primary is off to the races. Joining her are some lower profile candidates, including John Delaney (former MD congressman), Richard Ojeda (WV state senator and former congressional candidate), Tulsi Gabbard (HI congresswoman), Julian Castro (former secretary of HUD). And within the last week, senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Kamala Harris (D-CA) put their hats in the ring.
While many issues are likely to play prominent roles in this campaign — immigration, taxes, inequality, housing, universal pre-k, college affordability, environment/climate change — healthcare is likely to play an outsized role after Democrats found it to be a winning issue in 2018. Read More