Category: Drugs

Pediatric Exclusivity 101

Published on by Erika Lietzan3 Comments

Shortly before Alex Azar’s confirmation hearing (to be Secretary of HHS), a reporter called me with questions.  She had an angle she wanted to pursue: that Lilly had “gamed” a patent, using pediatric exclusivity, under Azar’s watch.  I explained pediatric exclusivity – what it was designed for, how it works, and how Lilly seemed to have used it precisely as designed. I mentioned the constraints that apply to company requests for pediatric exclusivity and told her that they were meaningful, mentioning Amgen’s ongoing litigation against FDA regarding exclusivity for Sensipar.

My explanation had little impact; the story ran as initially conceived.  Judge Moss ruled in the Sensipar dispute in late January, however, and Amgen has confirmed that it plans to appeal the ruling.  This is therefore the first of two posts on the issue of pediatric exclusivity.  Below I explain how pediatric exclusivity works; in the next post I will explain the Sensipar dispute.

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Decoding FDA’s Statement on DIY Gene Therapies

Published on by Patti ZettlerLeave a comment

Cross-posted on Stanford’s Law and the Biosciences Blog

In late November, FDA posted a statement on its website about the “self-administration of gene therapy”—which various media outlets interpreted as a reaction to some companies recently posting videos of consumers “self-experimenting” with gene therapy. One question that arose in some of the reporting—and in an exchange on twitter—is, what is FDA’s authority to regulate do-it-yourself (DIY) gene therapy?

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FDA Law SSRN Reading List – October and November (Part 2 of 2)

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Here are three more new and noteworthy articles from October and November, including Professor Robin Feldman’s new empirical study of the pharmaceutical industry.

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FDA Law SSRN Reading List – October and November (Part 1 of 2)

Published on by Erika LietzanLeave a comment

Here is what is new and interesting from the last two months.  I’ll start with two articles on off-label promotion and two articles relating to tobacco regulation.

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What to Make of Substantive Objections to FDA’s Intended Use Revisions?

Published on by Patti ZettlerLeave a comment

Cross-posted on Stanford’s Law and the Biosciences Blog

As I have previously written about here, in January FDA published a controversial revision to its regulations defining “intended use,” and then, in the wake of procedural and substantive objections to the revised definition, the agency delayed the effective date of the new rule until March 2018.  These revisions are important because the “intended use” of a product is crucial for determining whether the product is a drug or device subject to FDA jurisdiction at all, and if so, whether the drug or device is in compliance with various FDA requirements.  Accordingly, there is significant interest in the kinds of evidence that FDA considers relevant to determining a product’s intended use.  The January revision to FDA’s regulations explained that that FDA would use a “totality of the evidence” approach to determining intended use, which would permit the agency to look to “any relevant source of evidence,” including, perhaps most controversially, a manufacturer’s knowledge about consumers’ and patients’ actual uses of the product.  The procedural “logical outgrowth” arguments against this standard do not persuade me for the reasons I explained here.   Likewise, I am not sure the substantive arguments against the revised regulations convince me.

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Thoughts on “Reciprocal Marketing Approval”

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On October 26, Senator Cruz introduced the “Reciprocity Ensures Streamlined Use of Lifesaving Treatments Act of 2017” (S. 2022), which is interesting from an FDA law perspective as well as an administrative law perspective.  We have seen this proposal before — in 2015 (S. 2388, introduced by Senator Cruz) and in 2016 (H.R. 6241, introduced by Congressman DeSantis).  Rachel Sachs wrote about it from a policy perspective in December 2015, and Zach Brennan offered more details in his own piece the same month.  I am going to dig into the details a bit more than they did and explain why I call it the “Send All the FDA Employees Home Act of 2017.”

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FDA Law SSRN Reading List (September 2017)

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Here’s what to read on SSRN, relating to FDA law, from September 2017.  One piece contributes to a growing literature on the relationship between inter partes review and Hatch-Waxman litigation, and one piece dives into application of intended use doctrine to synthetic nicotine products.

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Hatch-Waxman Comments – Status Report (Part II)

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Last week I summarized some of the recommendations for FDA in the first 67 comments to the Hatch-Waxman docket that opened in July.  Today’s entry discusses the recommendations that relate to use and distribution restrictions, citizen petitions, and what some call “product hopping.”

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Hatch-Waxman Comments – Status Report (Part I)

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What are people recommending that FDA do, to improve the current balance between drug innovation and access to generic drugs?  The docket isn’t closed yet, but I’ve read the first 67 comments. . . .

Background

FDA held a public meeting in July to consider the Hatch-Waxman Amendments, asking for comment concerning its administration of the amendments “to help ensure the intended balance between encouraging innovation in drug development and accelerating the availability to the public of lower cost alternatives to innovator drugs is maintained.”  It also opened a docket for written comments, which was originally slated to close on September 18.  On September 19, it extended the date for submission of comments to November 17.   What follows is a high level overview of some of the main recommendations for FDA in the first 67 comments.

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The Logical Outgrowth Doctrine and FDA’s Intended Use Revisions

Published on by Patti ZettlerLeave a comment

Cross-Posted on Notice & Comment

In January FDA published a controversial revision to its regulations defining a product’s “intended use” that, among other things, has raised an interesting logical outgrowth question. “Intended use” is an important concept in FDA law because a product’s intended use—judged by the “objective intent of the persons legally responsible for the [product’s] labeling”—can be crucial to determining whether a product is a drug or device subject to FDA oversight at all, and whether an FDA-authorized drug or device is in compliance with FDA requirements. (Readers can find more about “intended use” generally, and the background behind the current controversy, here). Because “intended use” is so important in the FDA world, it should come as no surprise that stakeholders that disagree with the revised definition in the January final rule—which has yet to go into effect—have lodged both procedural and substantive arguments against the revision (see, e.g., here and here).

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