The lack of access to investigational treatments for people with ALS is unconscionable. The problem isn't new. We need to fix it now.
What's the best way to fix it?
A law? More laws? Fewer laws? Fewer regulations? More regulations? Public pressure? Smarter business strategies? Calls to conscience? Public funding? Private funding? A toolkit of some of these?There is a flurry of new legislation currently being proposed to fix various aspects of the problem.
A lesson I learned from the last law intended to fix the problem is that the devil is in the details. We need to know a lot more than the good intentions and a great name on proposed legislation.
Do we really need a law? Exactly how would it work? Examples, please. And details.
Conditional Approval
A proposal that is most interesting to me at the moment is the one on Conditional Approval.
https://www.braun.senate.gov/senator-braun-introduces-conditional-approval-act-patients-fatal-diseases-asks-comments
Senator Braun has provided both the full text as well as an opportunity to comment. I am grateful for that since we need to polish these proposals as much as possible before moving them forward as legislation.
I have more questions than comments, but I hope that they will be helpful and I know discussion of the answers will enlighten me.
Suppose a therapy is in a Phase 3 trial and the sponsor had intended all along to file for full approval. When the trial is complete and the sponsor sees the data, the sponsor isn't sure that the FDA will be enthusiastic about a broad, full approval.
- Can the sponsor then ask for Conditional Approval when filing trial results with the FDA?
- Can the sponsor suggest the confirmatory studies and data that will be supplied in the future as part of the conditions? Or is that all up to the FDA?
- If a sponsor had decided to go ahead and ask for full approval, could the FDA respond with a suggestion that Conditional Approval would be more appropriate? Or must the sponsor always initiate the request without any prompting from the FDA?
- Could the FDA suggest confirmatory studies today (without this legislation) after viewing an application for full approval? Do we need a law?
- Does the FDA have the resources and teeth to enforce conditions on a Conditional Approval?
- Are there any precedents for the FDA to accept RWE as part of a full approval?
- Are there FDA guidances for quality-assurance of RWE?
- Do we know how government payers might approach covering a Conditionally Approved therapy?
Suppose a therapy is a repurposed drug with full approval in another country.
- Could Conditional Approval give the FDA a tool to force some confirmatory studies with a US population?
- Might Conditional Approval help us find the scientific truth on responder subgroups, making the drug a lot more useful and affordable for people in the US with ALS?
Conditional Approval has worked in Europe. That's encouraging, but the payer situation is very different there.
Conditional Approval has worked for veterinary products. That's encouraging, but again, the payer situation is very different.
Can we make this concept work? I hope we can if it can bring therapies to people with ALS sooner.
And as important, it seems to me that this could give us a way to get to scientific truth without giving broad approval to therapies that work only for subsets of responders.
Thanks to anyone who can advance the discussion. It's important that we don't stop at the title of the legislation.
