Congress is to be congratulated on its progress toward passage of user fee reauthorization legislation. House and Senate-passed versions are being reconciled by staff, with a few fairly tough issues yet to be resolved. There is no apparent barrier to a final piece of legislation later this month or during July.
One of the big winners in this process has been the rare disease/orphan drug (RD/OD) community. Notwithstanding a few remaining (minor) disputes in the RD/OD space (more on this later), the final legislation will contain the strongest set of improvements for the community since the original 1983 Orphan Drug Act.
The RD/OD community had three overriding objectives during the multi-year process of hearings and negotiations that culminated in the House and Senate-passed legislation:
- FDA flexibility in reviewing orphan drugs
- Resources and process improvements for development of biomarkers/pharmacogenomics
- Overhaul of the humanitarian device program
- The community achieved all three plus a number of additional items that will also be part of the final package.
The Commissioner’s Commitment Letter. The user fee agreement is only partially contained in the law—much of the detail is in a commitment letter signed by the Commissioner. As part of this, FDA agreed to the Rare Disease Initiative, which includes:
- Increased staffing of the CDER/CBER Rare Disease Programs (RDP) (which provides expertise in orphan drug development to the product review divisions)
- Increased FDA efforts to assure that product reviewers, industry, and patients are working together
- Broadening research and programming in the areas of non-traditional clinical trial design, endpoints, and statistical analysis associated with orphan drug development
- Enhanced staff training for reviewers with specific regard to approval of drugs for rare diseases
- Better integration of RDP staff into review teams
When the PDUFA legislation becomes law, these will be firm commitments that FDA must carry out for Fiscal Years (FY) 2013 (starts October 1, 2012) through FY 17.
Other RD/OD Priorities. A number of other proposals, critical to the RD/OD community are in both the House and Senate bills:
- Establishing procedures for faster review and more flexibility for promising therapies for unmet (orphan) medical needs. This will be accomplished by:
- Updating and codifying FDA’s existing accelerated approval process
- Adding a new process to speed development of drugs demonstrating strong efficacy in the early stages of clinical development (the Breakthrough Act).
- Encouraging greater use of the existing, successful Humanitarian Use Device (HUD) program. The reauthorization legislation expands the scope of HUD (adult and not just children’s devices) and allows companies to make a profit.
- Permitting FDA to use a wider range of experts and to use the government-wide standards for assessing conflicts of interest
- Re-authorizing and improving the Orphan Drug grant program
- The Remaining Issues. There are three RD/OD issues that differ between the bills.
The first is in the Senate bill and tries to expand and strengthen the patient voice in FDA discussions. FDA is already doing this. However, the agency has a weak understanding of how much risk some rare disease patients might be willing to bear in order to have even a small possibility of benefit. Patients need to be heard in this debate. I hope the House agrees to this provision.
The second provision is in the House bill. It would revise the accelerated approval process to allow its use when there is little or no data on a rare disease with a particularly small population. I think these represent situations where FDA can best judge each situation themselves rather than being prodded into what might well be an unscientific review process. I hope the Senate does not adopt this provision.
Finally, the House has included a pilot program to encourage development of drugs and biologics for rare pediatric diseases. There are some questions about how this will work, so making it a pilot program makes sense. I hope the Senate agrees to this provision.