1

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION

FDA SCIENCE BOARD ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Thursday, April 22, 2004

8:00 a.m.

Advisors and Consultants Staff Conference Room

5630 Fishers Lane

Rockville, Maryland

2

PARTICIPANTS

Kenneth I. Shine, M.D., Chair

Jan. N. Johannessen, Ph.D., Executive Secretary

BOARD MEMBERS:

Gail H. Cassell, Ph.D.

Josephine Grima, Ph.D., Consumer Representative

Susan Harlander, Ph.D.

Cato T. Laurencin, M.D., Ph.D.

Cecil B. Pickett, Ph.D.

F. Xavier Pi-Sunyer, M.D., M.P.H.

Jose C. Principe, Ph.D.

Jim E. Riviere, D.V.M., Ph.D.

Allen D. Roses, M.D.

Katherine M.J. Swanson, Ph.D.

John L. Thomas, Ph.D.

OFFICE OF THE COMMISSIONER:

Lester M. Crawford, D.V.M., Ph.D.,

Norris E. Alderson, Ph.D.

FDA:

Daniel A. Casciano, Ph.D.

David W. Feigel, Jr., M.D., M.P.H.

Kathy Carbone, M.D.

John Marzilli

Robert E. Brackett, Ph.D.

Steven Galson, M.D., M.P.H.

3

C O N T E N T S

Call to Order, Kenneth I. Shine, M.D., Chair, 5

Welcome and Opening Remarks,

Lester M. Crawford, D.V.M., Ph.D., Acting

Commissioner of Food and Drugs 9

Overview of the FDA Initiative on Obesity,

Robert E. Brackett, Ph.D., CFSAN, FDA 19

Obesity - Therapeutics, David G. Orloff, M.D.,

CDER, FDA 27

Obesity - Research, David W.K. Acheson, M.D.,

CFSAN, FDA 47

Highlights of the Obesity Working Group Report,

Alan Rulis, Ph.D., CFSAN, FDA 76

Questions and Discussion with the

Board/Presenters 96

Update on ORA Peer Review Process,

John R. Marzilli, Deputy Associate

Commissioner for Regulatory Affairs, FDA 129

John J. Specchio, Ph.D., ORA Science Advisor 135

Open Public Hearing:

Arthur Frank, M.D., George Washington University 150

Elizabeth Jacobson, Ph.D., AdvaMed 158

Richard Atkinson, M.D., American

Obesity Association 170

Introduction to Critical Path, Janet Woodcock,

M.D., Acting Deputy Commissioner for

Operations, FDA 175

Perspective on Anti-Infectives and Vaccines,

Gail H. Cassell, Ph.D., Eli Lilly and Company 220

Perspective on Chronic Disease Therapies,

Robert M. Califf, M.D., Duke University 241

4

C O N T E N T S

Drug Formulation and Development, and Tissue

Engineering Issues, Robert S. Langer, Sc.D., MIT 268

Overview of Opportunities - Drugs, Robert Temple,

M.D., CDER, FDA 298

Overview of Opportunities - Devices, Larry G.

Kessler, Sc.D., CDRH, FDA 324

Overview of Opportunities - Biologics,

Jesse Goodman, M.D., M.P.H., CBER, FDA 339

Questions and Discussion with Board -

Recommendations 363

5

1 P R O C E E D I N G S

2 Call to Order

3 DR. SHINE: Good morning, ladies and

4 gentlemen. We will come to order. Welcome to this

5 meeting of the FDA Science Board Advisory

6 Committee. I am Ken Shine. Mark McClellan, when

7 he was Commissioner, asked me if I would chair this

8 committee then he split!

9 \[Laughter\]

10 I was a little anxious because our

11 colleague, Dr. Crawford, who is the Acting

12 Commissioner, was scheduled perhaps to be in Japan

13 but it turns out that he is able to be here so I

14 don\'t feel quite so deserted. But we are pleased

15 to be able to welcome you to this meeting which

16 will be focused on two major and extremely

17 important issues for all of us, the issues relating

18 to the epidemic of obesity, which is a worldwide

19 epidemic of extraordinary proportions in terms of

20 all of the implications of that epidemic; and then

21 an examination of the Critical Path in terms of the

22 necessity to find ways to bring new products to

6

1 market in a timely and cost effective way.

2 We have a very distinguished advisory

3 committee and before we ask Dr. Crawford to make

4 his introductory comments, perhaps we could go

5 around, starting with Dr. Pickett, and ask you to

6 identify yourself and then just a sentence or so

7 about your area of interest or perspective that you

8 bring to the committee so that folks have a sense

9 of your approach to things. Dr. Pickett?

10 DR. PICKETT: Yes, good morning. I am

11 Cecil Pickett. I am President of Research and

12 Development for the Schering-Plough Corporation,

13 which is the pharmaceutical arm of Schering-Plough.

14 I obviously have a fundamental interest in drug

15 discovery and drug development and how we can bring

16 innovative new therapies to patients.

17 DR. PRINCIPE: Good morning. My name is

18 Jose Principe. I am Distinguished Professor of

19 Electrical and Biomedical Engineering at the

20 University of Florida, and my expertise resides in

21 electrical systems and machine and learning

22 algorithms.

7

1 DR. RIVIERE: Hello. I am Jim Riviere. I

2 am Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology, North

3 Carolina State University, and have expertise in

4 pharmacology and toxicology.

5 DR. GRIMA: Hi. My name is Josephine

6 Grima. I am the Director of Research and

7 Legislative Affairs for the National Marfan

8 Foundation, and I am the consumer representative.

9 DR. THOMAS: Good morning. I am John

10 Thomas, Vice President, retired, and Professor

11 Emeritus of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University

12 of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

13 DR. SWANSON: Good morning. I am Katie

14 Swanson. I am with the President of KMJ Swanson

15 Food Safety, a food safety consulting firm.

16 DR. LAURENCIN: I am Cato Laurencin. I am

17 a Lillian Pratt Distinguished Professor and Chair

18 of Orthopaedic Surgery, and university professor at

19 the University of Virginia. My areas of expertise

20 are biomaterials, tissue engineering and

21 nanotechnology.

22 DR. PI-SUNYER: I am Xavier Pi-Sunyer. I

8

1 am Professor of Medicine at Columbia University

2 College of Physicians and Surgeons, and I am

3 Director of the Division of Endocrinology and the

4 Obesity Research Center at St. Lukes Roosevelt

5 Hospital. My area of interest is diabetes and

6 obesity.

7 DR. HARLANDER: Hello. My name is Susan

8 Harlander. I am president of my consulting firm,

9 called BIOrational Consultants. My background is

10 in food science and nutrition and I work primarily

11 in the areas of genetically modified foods and

12 drugs.

13 DR. ROSES: I am Allen Roses. I am Senior

14 Vice President in Genetics Research,

15 GlaxoSmithKline. I spent 27 years at Duke and the

16 final 20 of those I was Chairman of Neurology. My

17 expertise is in neurology and genetics, medicine

18 and a variety of other.

19 DR. SHINE: Thank you. Have I missed

20 anybody on the committee? We will be hearing from

21 some of our colleagues at the FDA shortly. I am

22 Ken Shine. I serve currently as the Executive Vice

9

1 Chancellor of Health Affairs at the University of

2 Texas System, after two terms at the Institute of

3 Medicine. I am interested in health policy. As a

4 cardiologist, I also recommend the food for

5 breakfast\--

6 \[Laughter\]

7 \--and hope that in the interest of

8 controlling obesity we will all have heart healthy

9 lunches. So, we will see!

10 I think we are very fortunate that Les

11 Crawford can serve as the interim Commissioner. I

12 have known Dr. Crawford for many years and his

13 leadership in this organization has been manifest

14 over and over again. He brings wonderful

15 experience and perspective and we will ask him to

16 make a few remarks. Les?

17 Welcome and Opening Remarks

18 DR. CRAWFORD: Well, thanks very much, Dr.

19 Shine, and thank you very much for agreeing to be

20 chairman. It is one of the lasting legacies of the

21 great Mark McClellan that you are here. You cannot

22 be replaced until he comes back\--

10

1 \[Laughter\]

2 \--it is almost like a biblical thing.

3 DR. SHINE: Now I am worried!

4 DR. CRAWFORD: In any case, I want to

5 welcome you as the chairman and also we have four

6 new members, all of whom I have known before except

7 Dr. Allen Roses, and I am particularly grateful for

8 you to agree to serve on this committee. We expect

9 great things from you and you will have a fun time.

10 I think your particular area of expertise is very

11 much needed by the committee and I hope it is an

12 enjoyable and fruitful thing for you.

13 I have known Dr. Susan Harlander for a

14 long time, and she was been nominated for this

15 committee and turned us down one time before but

16 she can run but she can\'t hide. She is right here

17 today, and thank you for that.

18 Xavier Pi-Sunyer and I served on the same

19 committee, another committee which met only one

20 day, Dr. Pi-Sunyer, and went away, some ten years

21 ago. This one is enduring. So, thank you also.

22 Gail Cassell\--I think Gail is not here yet

11

1 but she is coming. Also, she is very well

2 recommended because she comes from the University

3 of Alabama, Birmingham. She and I speak the same

4 language and communicate often. So, we are

5 grateful to her also.

6 We have had, as I mentioned earlier, the

7 transfer actually of Mark McClellan to the Center

8 for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That is a blow

9 for us but it is a strengthening of our Department

10 of Health and Human Services, which is our umbrella

11 organization under Tommy Thompson. So, Dr.

12 McClellan is still available to us and we see him

13 fleetingly but he is very much interested in what

14 is happening here, and we will continue to stay in

15 touch throughout this administration and beyond.

16 We remain focused on his strategic plan

17 that has now become our strategic plan and also on

18 the five goals where were developed during that

19 time, which were shared and worked out to some

20 extent in concert with this committee. Those have

21 stood the test of time. All the work is not

22 completed but we believe those benchmarks that were

12

1 established by the committee or commission on the

2 strategic plan which meets monthly in order to do a

3 check of how well we are doing\--we think all of

4 that work will be accomplished within this

5 presidential administration. At that time we will

6 put a ribbon around it, put it in a box and serve

7 it up to the American people. I think it is a job

8 already well done but a job not quite completed.

9 We are focusing on our mission of

10 protecting and advancing public health. We face

11 many new challenges and opportunities. We are

12 proceeding with your help through the most

13 difficult part, which is bringing science to bear

14 on the regulatory process.

15 This session of the FDA Science Advisory

16 Board is scheduled, actually, at a very opportune

17 time. The agency has undertaken a number of major

18 new initiatives, two of which you will be hearing

19 about in much greater detail during the remainder

20 of the day.

21 On March 12 of last year Secretary

22 Thompson released a new FDA report outlining the

13

1 agency\'s strategy for combating the major public

2 health problem of obesity, actually initiated it on

3 March 12 of last year and received a report from

4 FDA this year. In point of fact, three different

5 agencies, under the leadership of Secretary

6 Thompson, did major initiatives on obesity. These

7 were six-month programs to bring together the

8 expertise in the National Institutes of Health, the

9 Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug

10 Administration.

11 During the time that those three

12 committees were working on the problem of obesity,

13 from its very fundamental scientific rationale all

14 the way up to ameliorative steps, the estimated

15 number of deaths from obesity-related diseases in

16 the United States increased from 300,000 per year

17 to 400,000 per year. A major path-breaking paper

18 by Dr. Julie Gerberding and others at the Centers

19 for Disease Control and Prevention have estimated

20 that obesity is going to overtake smoking as the

21 leading cause of death in the United States by the

22 end of this decade.

14

1 These are chilling figures. It is a

2 horrible disease, a complex of diseases that is

3 lurching out of control. FDA, through the

4 authorities it has under the Nutrition, Labeling

5 and Education Act, must do something. Dr. Bob

6 Brackett is going to detail that for you. He came

7 in as Director of the Center for Food Safety and

8 Applied Nutrition in the middle of the obesity

9 initiative but his expertise and leadership are

10 very much part and parcel of our accomplishing of

11 this mission. He will talk about the other people

12 from his Center and elsewhere who were on the

13 committee, but it is a great accomplishment for FDA

14 and I am very pleased that you are going to hear

15 about it in depth from Dr. Brackett himself.

16 The second major thing is the Critical

17 Path initiative which was developed in the last

18 stages of Dr. McClellan\'s tenure here. It has

19 stood the test of introduction; it has not stood

20 the test of time yet. But with your help we will

21 get the Critical Path from the research laboratory

22 to the bedside, to the pharmacy, to the hospital

15

1 and all other places where we need to be sure that

2 FDA is not an impediment to the development and

3 introduction of new drugs and other modalities of

4 therapy, and also fine-tuning our procedures so

5 that we actually encourage by efficiency the

6 development of much needed drugs in much needed

7 areas.

8 One of the things that you will hear about

9 today is a publication, on a regular basis, of

10 Critical Path opportunities that we will list to

11 the public, to the industry that we serve, and also

12 to all other stakeholders about what we think are

13 the opportunities for new development that FDA

14 would like to work with sponsors on, work with

15 research institutions on and anybody and everybody

16 else. This is something new for FDA and I think we

17 are ready for it, but you will also have some

18 targets of opportunity this morning to help shape

19 and develop that critical initiative. I believe it

20 will be with us for a long time. We have had some

21 similar kinds of things in the past that we have

22 come up with, but this one has a system to it and

16

1 we believe, if we do it right, it will be enduring

2 and it will mark a new era for the Food and Drug

3 Administration. So, your critical attendance to

4 that is very much solicited. Dr. Woodcock will be

5 talking about that.

6 At this point I would like to turn the

7 floor back over to Ken Shine, with many thanks once

8 again for his leadership on this committee. I am

9 looking forward to the day, as I hope all of you

10 are. Thank you.

11 DR. SHINE: Thank you very much, Dr.

12 Crawford. One of the responsibilities of this

13 committee is to be the final judges in the FDA

14 scientific achievement awards program. Those

15 awards apparently will be given in another month or

16 so, but I think one of the parts of our activities

17 has been the opportunity to look at the quality of

18 the science. I had a great deal of difficulty in

19 choosing in many categories the more outstanding of

20 the proposal because the science was so good. I

21 think that is an area that has been extremely

22 encouraging to the committee.

17

1 We do have some other business we have to

2 undertake before we begin the program, and Jan

3 Johannessen is going to take care of that.

4 DR. JOHANNESSEN: Thank you, Dr. Shine.

5 The following announcement addresses the issue of

6 conflict of interest with respect to this meeting,

7 and is made part of the public record to preclude

8 even the appearance of such at the meeting.

9 The Food and Drug Administration has

10 prepared general matters waivers for Drs. Shine,

11 Principe, Pickett, Grima, Riviere, Laurencin,

12 Swanson, Thomas, Roses, Pi-Sunyer, Cassell,

13 Harlander and one of the guest speakers, Dr.

14 Califf. A copy of the waiver statements may be

15 obtained by submitting a written request to our

16 Freedom of Information office. The waivers permit

17 them to participate in the committee\'s discussion

18 of FDA\'s obesity working group report and Critical

19 Path initiative.

20 Topics of today\'s meeting are of broad

21 applicability and, unlike issues before a committee

22 in which a particular product is discussed, issues

18

1 of broader applicability involve many industrial

2 sponsors and academic institutions. The

3 participating committee members have been screened

4 for their financial interests as they may apply to

5 these general topics at hand. Because general

6 topics impact so many institutions, it is not

7 practical to recite all the potential conflicts of

8 interest as they apply to each participant. The

9 FDA acknowledges that there may be potential

10 conflicts of interest but, because of the general

11 nature of the discussion before the committee,

12 these potential conflicts are mitigated.

13 We have open public comments scheduled for

14 eleven o\'clock. I would just remind everyone to

15 turn your microphones on when you speak so that the

16 transcriber can pick everything up. Thank you.

17 DR. SHINE: Thank you very much, Jan. I

18 think we are prepared now to go to our program. I

19 would just make a couple of observations. This is

20 a very dense program and we are going to have to,

21 on the one hand, hold our speakers to the time that

22 is allotted to them and, at the same time, I would

19

1 urge you to make notes and recognize that if they

2 use their full allotted time we are not going to be

3 able to question them at that time but, rather, we

4 have a specific period at 10:15 for a period of

5 questions. So, if there are issues where you

6 really need clarification in order to understand

7 what is being proposed, then by all means we ought

8 to do that. On the other hand, we are going to

9 have to move expeditiously through the

10 presentations if we are going to get today\'s work

11 done.

12 We are pleased that the overview for the

13 FDA initiative on obesity, as you have heard, will

14 be provided by Dr. Robert Brackett and we invite

15 him to proceed.

16 Overview of the FDA Initiative on Obesity

17 DR. BRACKETT: Thank you, Dr. Shine.

18 \[Slide\]

19 Good morning, everybody. I am Bob

20 Brackett and what I am going to do is give a very

21 brief overview of sort of the major points of the

22 obesity initiative, and then following me the next

20

1 three speakers will actually get into some of the

2 more final details that were part of the

3 initiative, as well as some of the summary of the

4 report.

5 \[Slide\]

6 I think the background for why we did this

7 is pretty much apparent to most people in that

8 people have sort of rediscovered that obesity in

9 this country and worldwide is, in fact, of epidemic

10 proportions in that in the United States overweight

11 and obese people have increased risks of many other

12 chronic diseases that are relating to the deaths

13 that Dr. Crawford mentioned, including heart

14 disease, diabetes and certain types of cancer.

15 Also, as Dr. Crawford mentioned, it is enough so

16 that there are significant deaths, to the point

17 where that is competing with tobacco as a public

18 health problem. So, it is something that we do

19 need to address within FDA, something that we have

20 partnered on with other entities within Health and

21 Human Services. In fact, this is sort of a

22 nationwide program where it takes the participation

21

1 and the partnership of many different groups. That

2 is one of the things we have attempted to do and

3 will attempt to do.

4 \[Slide\]

5 One thing that is lost, in addition to the

6 400,000 deaths that are estimated related to

7 obesity, is the economic cost of obesity to this

8 country. That is estimated at 117 billion dollars

9 per year. So, that has a major impact on the

10 health costs in this country and does drive the

11 cost for everybody. So, it is something that we

12 all need to participate in trying to eliminate.

13 \[Slide\]

14 The obesity working group was actually

15 created in 2003, in August, by Dr. McClellan when

16 he was here. At that time Dr. Crawford was the

17 chair and my predecessor, Joe Levitt, was the

18 deputy chair at that time.

19 \[Slide\]

20 They were given a very simple charge, and

21 that was to prepare a report that outlines an

22 action plan that would cover the critical

22

1 dimensions of the obesity problem that FDA could

2 participate in with the other agencies as well.

3 \[Slide\]

4 During that time the group was very

5 active. From 2003 to 2004\--that is not much time

6 to do all of the activities that they had to and

7 they were very, very active. It was on a fast

8 track. The obesity working group met eight times

9 during that short period of time. They received

10 briefings from a number of different invited

11 experts from the Department of Health and Human

12 Services, as well as and including Centers for

13 Disease Control and NIH. We did hold one public

14 meeting and one workshop; two round table

15 discussions; and also solicited from the public

16 many different comments on our obesity related

17 issues by docket submissions. So, in fact, we did

18 try to absorb as much information to put in this

19 report as we possibly could, and then tried to

20 synthesize all of what was provided and provide the

21 report that was required.

22 \[Slide\]

23

1 This is just a copy of the report, and

2 this has been submitted. It is called \"Calories

3 Count\" and it is the report of the working group on

4 obesity. What the report actually does is to

5 provide a range of both short- and long-term

6 recommendations to address this epidemic.

7 An important part is that we did try to

8 base all of these recommendations on known

9 scientific facts. So, it did take some teasing

10 apart of what was thought to be contributing to

11 obesity versus what is known from a nutritional

12 standpoint. The one thing it also attempted to do,

13 and did, is address the multiple facets that

14 contribute to the obesity problem, particularly

15 those that are under FDA\'s purview.

16 \[Slide\]

17 Some of the recommendation highlights that

18 were given from it are, first of all, developing

19 appropriate and effective consumer messages to aid

20 consumers in making wiser dietary choices. That

21 was one of the most important things, that is, to

22 actually get consumers to understand that they are

24

1 in control of their weight problems, and to

2 establish educational strategies and partnerships

3 to support these appropriate methods to teach

4 people, and particularly children with regard to

5 childhood obesity, how they can lead better lives

6 through better nutrition. So, this is getting back

7 to some really fundamental issues that needed to be

8 addressed to the American people.

9 \[Slide\]

10 It also involved pursuing improvements to

11 the labeling of packaged foods with respect to

12 caloric and other nutritional information, that is,

13 giving the consumers the information they need to

14 make the judgments that we were trying to educate

15 them about.

16 Then, encouraging and enlisting

17 restaurants in voluntary, collaborative efforts to

18 combat obesity and then also provide nutritional

19 content information to consumers at the point of

20 sale. Since many of the meals are eaten away from

21 the home, this was particularly important.

22 \[Slide\]

25

1 It also recommended facilitating the

2 development of new therapeutics that could be used

3 in the treatment of obesity, and then,

4 coincidentally, designing and collaborating with

5 others\--and that \"others\" is very broad\--effective

6 research in the fight against obesity. So, it was

7 really trying to encompass the whole scope of

8 activities that could be done. Again, the

9 important part was really involving the

10 stakeholders continuously throughout these various

11 processes. We had to not be dictating what this

12 was but it was actually a very participatory

13 process.

14 \[Slide\]

15 The conclusions, in summary were, as many

16 of us already know, that the problem of obesity in

17 America really has no single cause. There is no

18 one thing that you could point to; it is really the

19 result of a variety of different factors that when

20 they act together over time\--and this includes the

21 genetic component for consumers and environmental

22 factors\--do contribute to increasing obesity and,

26

1 consequently, there also is no single solution to

2 this problem in that the current trends will only

3 be reversed if you have well-coordinated,

4 complementary efforts from virtually all sectors of

5 society to combat this.

6 \[Slide\]

7 The other thing, and the part that we

8 needed to particularly emphasize to consumers, is

9 that the obesity epidemic is not going to be solved

10 quickly, neither will their individual weight

11 problems be solved quickly. Any long-lasting

12 reversal of the phenomenon will itself be a

13 long-term process. We took a long time to get to

14 this point and it is going to take some time to

15 reverse it.

16 \[Slide\]

17 Just to give you a little bit of update

18 about the obesity working group, Dr. Rulis, who

19 will be speaking this morning as well, has been

20 engaging in a national policy dialogue of what

21 things can and could be done with regard to

22 obesity, especially FDA\'s participation. Dr.

27

1 Orloff, who will also be following up, has dealt a

2 lot with the therapeutics aspects of obesity and,

3 of course, the research component, which will be

4 discussed by Dr. Acheson, can provide more details

5 on where the research sort of would be heading in

6 the future.

7 With that, I will end and, again, leave

8 some of the details to the speakers that follow,

9 and with them you will get a lot more of the

10 nitty-gritty of what the obesity working group has

11 accomplished in the last year.

12 DR. SHINE: Thank you, Dr. Brackett. Why

13 don\'t we proceed then to hear from David G. Orloff,

14 who is the Director of the Division of Metabolic

15 and Endocrine Drugs in the Center for Drug

16 Evaluation and Research, to talk about therapeutics

17 involved in obesity?

18 Obesity - Therapeutics

19 DR. ORLOFF: Good morning. Thank you very

20 much.

21 \[Slide\]

22 What I am going to use my time on to do

28

1 today is to give you a brief overview of what the

2 therapeutics subgroup which largely consisted of

3 members of the Division of Metabolic and Endocrine

4 Drug Products\--myself, Dr. Eric Colman and Dr.

5 Patricia Beaston\--reported to the overall obesity

6 working group according to our charge from Dr.

7 McClellan and the original charge to the group

8 itself.

9 Specifically, I will give you a sense and

10 an understanding, I hope, of where we are today in

11 our regulatory stance; how we got here; and what

12 our plans are for the immediate future as we

13 participate in this enterprise to address this

14 public health problem.

15 \[Slide\]

16 Let me start with two quotes which

17 actually are cited by Dr. Bray, who is a leader in

18 this field, in a recent paper that is actually

19 included in a volume edited by Dr. Pi-Sunyer who is

20 with us.

21 The first is that sudden death is more

22 common in those who are naturally fat than lean.

29

1 This sounds like a contemporary summary statement

2 from a modern epidemiologic study.

3 The second, which is a bit older sounding

4 but perhaps more broadly conclusive in a sense,

5 reads that corpulency, when in an extraordinary

6 degree, may be reckoned a disease, as it in some

7 measure obstructs the free exercise of the animal

8 functions, and has a tendency to shorten life by

9 paving the way to dangerous distempers.

10 Well, as the title of this slide suggests,

11 these are actually not new observations. The first

12 is a quote from Hippocrates and the second is a

13 quote from Dr. Fleming of the Edinborough School,

14 writing in 1760.

15 \[Slide\]

16 Today we call these risks associated with

17 obesity co-morbidities. While they are certainly

18 better enumerated and their pathophysiology better

19 understood, as I have suggested, this is not a new

20 problem. As you can see and as everyone is aware

21 around the table, these co-morbidities run the

22 gamut from cardiovascular disease and all of its

30

1 manifestations through the big problem of metabolic

2 syndrome and burgeoning epidemic or existing

3 epidemic of type 2 diabetes, to increased risk for

4 a variety of malignancies and a whole host of

5 psychological disorders, including depression and

6 eating disorders.

7 One of the reasons I start with this slide

8 is because, frankly, the drug side of FDA has been,

9 for lack of a better term, accused in the past of

10 being somewhat insensitive to the magnitude of this

11 problem as reflected in all of these risks, and I

12 want to assure everyone that we fully understand

13 the overall metabolic and health consequences of

14 obesity and it drives our interest in ongoing

15 active participation in this initiative.

16 \[Slide\]

17 So, with that, Dr. McClellan gave us

18 really two charges that asked us to address the

19 problem, we believe, from two different sides. The

20 first was to assess the real or perceived barriers

21 to development of new or enhanced therapeutics.

22 Then, as I said, coming at it from the other side,

31

1 to make recommendations on ways to encourage

2 development of new or enhanced therapeutics.

3 We took this as a call, on the one hand,

4 to make sure, as always, that we were well informed

5 and up to date in our understanding of obesity and

6 its risks, but also that we really ought to be

7 revisiting our FDA guidance to industry on

8 development of drugs for obesity. Needless to say,

9 FDA guidance to industry is supposed to represent

10 current thinking and I think it is worth at least

11 considering that 1996 is retreating into the past

12 and we ought to make sure that that is still our

13 current thinking.

14 So, we have an open comment period on that

15 document that is closing in a few weeks. We have

16 already had face-to-face dialogue with the American

17 Obesity Association of PhRMA, of which Dr. Crawford

18 was president, and we will be convening an advisory

19 committee later this year to discuss potential

20 changes to our guidance.

21 \[Slide\]

22 The harsh reality of the state of medical

32

1 therapeutics is really where we start. The fact is

2 that although there are a number of drugs on the

3 market for the treatment of obesity, current

4 therapies are really not the panacea or in any way

5 miracle drugs. They generally induce only modest

6 degrees of weight loss. Weight maintenance is

7 really a central problem in addressing this public

8 health issue.

9 It is important to understand, with regard

10 to the state of the evidence, that we have limited

11 data available on the impact of drug-associated

12 weight loss on morbid outcomes. The Xendos trial

13 with Orlistat in obese patients at risk for type 2

14 diabetes is one recent example of a finding that

15 touches or that addresses the effects of weight

16 loss on that significant outcome. But we really

17 have no mortality data and we think that that is a

18 big hole. I think everybody agrees that that is a

19 big hole in our understanding.

20 \[Slide\]

21 But having said that, opportunities

22 abound. This is a list of the potential targets

33

1 and mechanistic approaches to the treatment of

2 obesity that are really under development and

3 consideration and research, and the list grows

4 daily with an increasing understanding by those

5 involved in the scientific side of this enterprise,

6 with increasing understanding not only of the

7 physiology of weight maintenance and of energy

8 economy in general, but also the pathophysiology of

9 obesity.

10 \[Slide\]

11 Let me tell you where we see the path

12 forward to safe and effective obesity drugs from

13 the standpoint of the Center for Drugs. To do so,

14 I need to tell you a little bit about the modern

15 history of obesity therapeutics; to talk to you

16 about standards of evidence for approval of drugs

17 prior to our 1996 guidance; and the transformation

18 in medical perception of obesity to the way it is

19 looked at today that led ultimately to the

20 development of our standards and rationale in our

21 1996 guidance. There are multiple areas for

22 discussion. I will really touch mostly on just one

34

1 of them.

2 These, if you will, constitute some of the

3 barriers which Dr. McClellan asked us to address,

4 as well as a number of unanswered questions that,

5 in our mind, constitute barriers as well, although

6 perhaps not barriers in the same way as regulatory

7 barriers.

8 With regard to the modern history, as I

9 think most people realize, it is a checkered one.

10 It has been fraught with ill-conceived mechanistic

11 approaches, unscrupulous investigators and

12 practitioners and a lot of bad luck along the way,

13 if nothing else.

14 \[Slide\]

15 It begins in the 1880s with the use of

16 thyroid extract and drug-induced hyperthyroidism as

17 a path to weight loss with its attendant risks,

18 into the 1930s with dinitrophenol which,

19 incidentally, continues to rear its head even today

20 and which, as many of you realize, is one of the

21 poster children in the FDA chamber of horrors that

22 led ultimately to the passage of the 1938 Food,

35

1 Drug and Cosmetic Act, along with the elixir of

2 sulfinamide tragedy, to amphetamines which really

3 came to market in the mid-1930s and, as I will say

4 in a few minutes, dominated the scene with regard

5 to obesity therapeutics over the last half century

6 and their problems related to addiction and CNS and

7 cardiac toxicity.

8 The late 1960s marked really the end of

9 the Rainbow pill problem which had begun some 20 or

10 25 years before. These were medical regimens which

11 included fixed-dose combinations of digitalis and

12 thyroid hormone but, in the collective, included

13 the addition of thiazide and other diuretics,

14 purgatives as well as amphetamines. It was that

15 lethal combination of digitalis and thiazides with

16 hypokalemia and accentuated digitalis toxicity that

17 led to numerous tragedies and ultimately to

18 regulatory action against this enterprise.

19 The 1970s saw a mini epidemic in primary

20 pulmonary hypertension, mostly in Europe, related

21 to Aminorex and I think people are aware of the

22 unfortunate case of Redux and the unexpected, but

36

1 in some cases, frankly malignant cardiac

2 valvulopathy that resulted from the use of those

3 drugs.

4 I think it is worth pointing out, and

5 everyone should realize, that in terms of a barrier

6 that this history, on the one hand definitely

7 tempers our approach from a regulatory standpoint

8 to the development of therapeutics in this area,

9 but I also think that it has affected in the past,

10 and continues to affect, the overall integrity of

11 the anti-obesity enterprise and it is something, if

12 you will, that from a public relations standpoint

13 needs to be dealt with.

14 \[Slide\]

15 This is a list of the centrally-acting

16 anorexigens approved after 1938. I put it up

17 really to show you that the last 50 years is the

18 half century of amphetamine congeners in obesity

19 research and therapeutics.

20 Two drugs on this list, mazindol and

21 sibutramine, are not amphetamines per se but I

22 think all these drugs are stimulant anorexigens and

37

1 they have all been marketed as controlled

2 substances. All, except for sibutramine, as I will

3 explain in a moment, were approved and labeled for

4 only short-term use.

5 \[Slide\]

6 So, what were the standards of evidence

7 that we had to support the use of these drugs prior

8 to 1996? As I said, all of the drugs approved

9 prior to that time, and so labeled for treatment of

10 obesity were for short-term use. The trials that

11 supported the efficacy and safety of these products

12 were up to 12 weeks in duration and were limited in

13 size with 200-400 patients. There were obviously

14 concerns about abuse and addiction potential that I

15 mentioned a moment ago with these products and, as

16 I said, they were labeled for short-term use,

17 really dating back to the late 1960s and early

18 1970s.

19 Their efficacy was modest and, as you will

20 see in a moment, not really all that different from

21 what we have today, with the mean loss of

22 approximately 5 kg for placebo and a range of

38

1 placebo-subtracted means across multiple studies of

2 1-10 kg.

3 \[Slide\]

4 Although this is an age list epidemic and

5 the observations of its association with chronic

6 morbid and mortal conditions, you know, goes back

7 to the ancients, nevertheless, it took a sort of

8 reexamination to lead to a transformation in the

9 way this disease was perceived and in the way that

10 it ought to be treated. As I said, today it is

11 looked at as a chronic condition associated with

12 metabolic derangements and conferring the risk for

13 long-term morbid and mortal sequelae.

14 As I said, there is a big problem with the

15 high rate of weight regain following

16 discontinuation of drugs, and there is a

17 recognition that maintenance of healthy weight is

18 critical to reduction in risk for

19 obesity-associated adverse outcomes as opposed to

20 cycling of weight.

21 \[Slide\]

22 With this recognition or this casting in a

39

1 metabolic light, in 1992 the obesity drugs were

2 transferred to Endocrine and Metabolic, and in

3 1995, before my time, an advisory committee was

4 held to discuss this evolution and a disease model,

5 the standards for lifelong treatment algorithms

6 with these drugs, and discussion of clinical trial

7 design and evidentiary standards.

8 \[Slide\]

9 In 1996 a draft guidance was issued. The

10 cardinal features of that draft guidance include

11 the patient populations which are to be targeted,

12 which include those patients who have significant

13 obesity and who are at high risk for sequelae.

14 This is in keeping with the NIH evidence-based

15 treatment guidelines which were issued in that same

16 time frame.

17 The duration of Phase 3 trials which we

18 have adhered to up until now include a first year

19 of placebo-controlled investigation to provide

20 proof or principle of efficacy, followed by an

21 open-label year, in the second year, to provide

22 further information on durable efficacy and safety

40

1 in long-term use. This harkens back to the

2 historical bad luck to which I referred and,

3 frankly, to the absence of outcomes data with

4 existing drugs and to the fact that we are not

5 requiring any outcomes data for establishing the

6 balance of risk and benefit for these products.

7 \[Slide\]

8 With regard to the efficacy criteria, it

9 is notable that the FDA\'s efficacy standard is less

10 rigorous than the European one. We require either

11 a demonstration of a mean placebo-subtracted weight

12 loss greater than or equal to five percent of

13 baseline body weight, or that the proportion of

14 subjects who lose greater than or equal to five

15 percent of their baseline body weight is greater in

16 the drug than the placebo group. The EMEA, as you

17 can see, has ten percent cutoffs for both those

18 criteria.

19 \[Slide\]

20 Three drugs have been approved for

21 long-term treatment under the current guidelines.

22 The first, dexfenfluramine, was withdrawn less than

41

1 18 months after its approval, as I mentioned

2 earlier, related to unexpected cardiac

3 valvulopathy. Sibutramine, a centrally-acting

4 anorexigen, and Orlistat, a non-absorbed intestinal

5 lipase inhibitor, remain on the market. These are

6 indicated for long-term use. As I said before,

7 their efficacy over the loan haul, over the one to

8 two years of exposure in the clinical trials, is

9 about along the lines of the earlier products

10 approved for short-term use.

11 \[Slide\]

12 With regard to barriers, as I said, I will

13 mention just one, and this relates to the safety

14 exposures that have been required of sponsors

15 working in this area. The FDA has stated a minimum

16 of 1,500 patients for one year should be exposed to

17 these products prior to submission of an NDA, and

18 that 200-500 patients complete a second year to get

19 an understanding of durable efficacy and safety.

20 Those who have held that this might be too

21 rigorous have evoked the International Conference

22 on Harmonization E1A document on the development of

42

1 drugs for long-term treatment of

2 non-life-threatening conditions which cite 300-600

3 patients for 6 months and 100 for 1 year. They

4 cite also 1,500 patients total in all of the

5 studies, including Phase I.

6 \[Slide\]

7 But that document also explains that

8 longer and larger exposures are readily

9 rationalized and perhaps necessary if the benefit

10 of the drug is noted or expected to be small,

11 experienced only by a fraction of treated patients

12 and of uncertain magnitude as in reliance on a

13 surrogate, such as weight loss.

14 I think this characterizes the state of

15 the evidence and the state of the efficacy with

16 these products and it is really our rationale

17 behind requiring larger exposures. Also, I think

18 we all understand, as has been said many times

19 today, that the magnitude of this epidemic is such

20 that the anticipated target populations in

21 open-market use is absolutely astronomical and it

22 is our responsibility to be as sure as we can be

43

1 that drugs are going to be safe and effective when

2 they go out into these millions and millions of

3 patients.

4 \[Slide\]

5 With regard to therapeutic gaps and

6 unanswered questions, one of the issues that really

7 we believe bears further investigation is

8 head-to-head comparisons of approved agents. This

9 is an issue that comes up in a lot of different

10 fields of medical therapeutics and is certainly one

11 in which I think patients and physicians are

12 under-served by the pharmaceutical and clinical

13 investigational communities as a means of providing

14 evidence for individualized, rational choices in

15 treatment.

16 \[Slide\]

17 Long-term safety and efficacy of older

18 drugs also needs better understanding, particularly

19 phentermine.

20 \[Slide\]

21 I show you this slide of drug use data

22 from 1991-2002 to demonstrate that throughout these

44

1 last 12-plus years phentermine leads the pack with

2 regard to U.S. prescriptions. These were projected

3 prescriptions for 2002 but I think they were borne

4 out, and also projected for 2003. Phentermine

5 prescriptions are double those for sibutramine and

6 Orlistat, yet, this is a drug that is approved only

7 for short-term use. It is likely that in this

8 context it is being used for long-term use and we

9 really are poorly informed as to its long-term

10 safety and efficacy.

11 \[Slide\]

12 Studies of combination therapy, in order

13 that we can better label these drugs, are also

14 necessary and, parenthetically, studies of drug

15 cycling which I believe are commonplace in

16 therapeutic interventions in obesity\--more

17 information is required for purposes of drug

18 labeling. Finally, the \"Holy Grail\" that is the

19 question that we all yearn for an answer about, and

20 that is, do the drugs that we are going to use in

21 this area, both today\'s and tomorrow\'s, confer

22 long-term individual and population reductions in

45

1 morbid and mortal sequelae of obesity?

2 \[Slide\]

3 Finally, or actually next to finally, I

4 want to read you another quote, and this is from J.

5 Diamond, writing an interesting piece that he

6 published in Nature last year. The piece is really

7 about the worldwide epidemic of type 2 diabetes,

8 diabetes and obesity that humans generally,

9 although some more than others, are programmed as a

10 result of energy economy genes in the aggregate to

11 develop when food is overly abundant. That is

12 obviously why we are here today. In discussing

13 this problem he states that an epidemic of a

14 genetic disease waxes because of a rise in

15 environmental risk factors, and then wanes when the

16 number of susceptible potential victims falls, but

17 only because of the preferential deaths of those

18 who are genetically more susceptible.

19 This is a sobering concept and that is why

20 I wanted to bring it to our attention. However

21 long obesity has been a problem, it is clear that

22 we are still on the waxing side of this story.

46

1 When the obesity and type 2 diabetes epidemics

2 begin to wane we want it to be because of the

3 success of our interventions and not because of a

4 culling of the susceptibles.

5 \[Slide\]

6 In conclusion, from the standpoint of the

7 therapeutic subgroup the magnitude of the obesity

8 epidemic, its contribution to chronic disease, its

9 costs to individuals and society, and the absence

10 of broadly effective therapeutics constitute a call

11 to action by the collective medical community,

12 including FDA, and we are certainly committed in

13 that regard.

14 Resolution of issues around real or

15 perceived barriers to development is paramount to

16 advancing the field of obesity therapeutics, though

17 we want to emphasize that this must be without

18 sacrificing the overall quality of the obesity

19 armamentarium.

20 With that, diet and exercise remain the

21 mainstays of prevention and treatment of obesity;

22 drugs are adjunctive to hygienic measures. They

47

1 were yesterday, they are today and they will be

2 tomorrow we believe.

3 Precedent with older as well as newer

4 drugs, reliance on weight loss alone as a measure

5 of health effects of these products directs a

6 cautious, measured approach in obesity

7 therapeutics. Questions, among others, of

8 comparative efficacy and safety, long-term clinical

9 outcomes of treatment and effects of combination

10 therapy regimens must be addressed sooner rather

11 than later. Thank you very much.

12 DR. SHINE: Thank you very much. I think

13 we will go ahead and have Dr. Acheson make his

14 presentation and then it looks like we may have a

15 few minutes before the break to inquire about both

16 of these presentations.

17 David Acheson is Director of Food Safety

18 and Security Staff in the Center for Food Safety

19 and Applied Nutrition, and he is going to discuss

20 issues related to obesity and research.

21 Obesity - Research

22 DR. ACHESON: Good morning and thank you,

48

1 Dr. Shine, for that introduction.

2 \[Slide\]

3 What I am proposing to do over the next

4 few minutes is really to describe the process that

5 the obesity subgroup of the FDA obesity work group

6 underwent to begin to address the issue of obesity

7 research. This clearly is an enormous area and so

8 I want to begin with really just a focus on what

9 the overall approach was for this. One of the

10 mandates for the obesity work group was to identify

11 the applied basic research needs that include the

12 development of healthier foods, as well as a better

13 understanding of consumer behavior and motivation.

14 \[Slide\]

15 The overall approach that we took here was

16 really to begin with focusing on research topics

17 that were mission-relevant to FDA. When we began

18 to think about research in the context of obesity,

19 clearly, there is an enormous amount of research

20 going on and we needed to focus it down and target

21 it towards FDA relevant issues.

22 The approach that we took to try to do

49

1 this was to think through and to document current

2 and relevant research that was related to these

3 mission-relevant topics, and I am going to go

4 through some of those, and based on that, then to

5 identify knowledge gaps. Essentially, my

6 presentation is set up to look at some of the

7 research issues and subsequent knowledge gaps.

8 \[Slide\]

9 As we discussed this, we really tried to

10 narrow this down and came up with three principal

11 areas. The first was in relation to labeling and I

12 would say this is probably one of the largest areas

13 that we discussed. The labeling was broken down

14 into labeling in relation to restaurants and

15 labeling in relation to the Nutrition Facts Panel.

16 We also considered translational research,

17 and where I am going there is in relation to some

18 of the translation between the basic science and

19 the mission-relevant issues for FDA. We identified

20 three areas there that are of potential relevance:

21 the first, neonatal imprinting; second, \"omics\",

22 essentially genomics, proteomics and metabolomics;

50

1 and, thirdly, the impact of caloric restriction and

2 what research there was going on in FDA and other

3 areas that was related to that.

4 The third point was just to consider the

5 other areas. You just heard from Dr. Orloff

6 extensive discussion about drugs in relation to

7 obesity. But we also wanted to consider drugs and

8 devices, food additives and dietary supplements

9 and, essentially, those areas were largely excluded

10 from our consideration because they weren\'t mission

11 relevant research for FDA. I am not saying that

12 they are not relevant to the quest of tackling the

13 obesity problem but, as you will see, my

14 presentation doesn\'t cover those in any great

15 detail and the explanation is really that the

16 research in those areas is not relevant to the

17 mission of FDA.

18 \[Slide\]

19 So, to focus firstly on the labeling

20 research, the current research and some research

21 that was undertaken once the obesity work group was

22 established worked through the root of focus

51

1 groups. One of the areas that was addressed was

2 restaurant labeling and to determine consumer

3 reactions to menus that include caloric information

4 and, essentially, to ask the question whether, if

5 you provide caloric information on a menu, it makes

6 a difference to consumers\' choice.

7 The second area in relation to the food

8 label was to consider consumer reactions to the

9 nutrition facts panel. Obviously, there is a

10 limited amount of information you can get on a

11 facts panel, but what are the critical elements

12 that one needs to get on? Some of the areas that

13 were addressed there were the issue of calories of

14 the daily value, what did the consumers understand

15 by that; what the impact would be of eliminating

16 the calories from the fat section of the nutrition

17 facts panel; and then to consider what the impact

18 would be on adding more information on

19 multi-serving packages to show the actual calories

20 and the percent daily value in the package.

21 Where we were going there was essentially

22 that if you look at items that are typically

52

1 consumed in a single serving, such as a muffin, it

2 may be labeled in such a way that it is considered

3 that a muffin is two servings and not many of us

4 going to consume just half a muffin and put it on

5 the side for consuming later. So, it was more

6 logical to think through the total amount of

7 calories of the serving.

8 Obviously, the third point was to consider

9 messages and to determine what is the most

10 effective message for conveying these nutritional

11 issues.

12 \[Slide\]

13 As part of this, FDA has been involved in

14 the development of a social sciences model to help

15 determine the factors that influence dietary and

16 weight management. That has really involved three

17 areas The first is the review of literature to try

18 to identify factors that affect food behavior and

19 to catalog existing data; the second, to develop a

20 quantitative model really to get at what an

21 individual\'s decisions are affecting weight. This

22 works into physical activity and choice of food and

53

1 that, obviously, involves attitudes, behaviors and

2 environmental factors. Then, to get into the issue

3 of cost benefit analysis and the role of food

4 labeling regulation and the development of policy.

5 \[Slide\]

6 Some of the consumer perceptions and

7 attitudes\--and this is just a brief summary\--are

8 listed on this slide. Some of the things that we

9 learned from this brief study of the research

10 environment was the perception of overweight versus

11 obesity and the fact that, in fact, most or many

12 consumers don\'t consider overweight as a \"problem\"

13 and indicate that it is of little consequence to

14 consumers. It is different with obesity, but just

15 simply being overweight is not a significant

16 consequence.

17 Secondly, the perception of a person\'s

18 weight and typically adults and teenagers

19 mis-perceive their weight. Men tend to

20 underestimate their weight and healthy, underweight

21 women tend to overestimate their weight. Also,

22 parents misjudge the weight of their children and

54

1 will often determine that their children are at

2 healthy weight where, in fact, they may be a little

3 overweight.

4 The third point is what consumers\'

5 perception is of their diet, and there is a

6 tendency to think that generally you are eating a

7 more healthy diet than you actually are. If you

8 analyze the content of the diet, the perception

9 certainly is that you are eating better than, in

10 fact, you are eating.

11 Some of the recent focus groups have

12 really tried to target parents and children.

13 Obviously, part of our thinking here was the

14 research in relation to product obesity and trying

15 to work on that angle of it.

16 The second point there is the perception

17 of obesity, which I have alluded to, in terms of

18 access for information and the perceived barriers

19 and the motivating factors that will allow people

20 to alter these perceptions.

21 The conclusion of all of this was that

22 there is emphasis on incremental change. I think

55

1 as you have already heard, nothing is going to

2 happen here quickly. Also, we have to be cautious

3 of over-saturation of consumers. They obviously

4 want to receive health information but we have to

5 do this in a targeted, judged and careful way.

6 Finally, the focus on child education, I think, was

7 a very clear message as an area of research in

8 relation to this whole consumer aspect that has to

9 be considered as an important focus.

10 \[Slide\]

11 The knowledge gaps: the first knowledge

12 gap that comes out of this is information used to

13 facilitate consumers\' weight management decisions.

14 There is a very clear need for research in this in

15 both a qualitative and quantitative fashion. I

16 have just summarized three points there. Firstly,

17 the consumer reaction to the food label. I have

18 gone over some of the issues there, but what are

19 the advantages of highlighting the calories, or

20 listing the quantitative amounts of nutrients in

21 multi-size packages? Our initial focus groups

22 indicated that these are important areas. What we

56

1 need now is to take this into quantitative research

2 to really document the impact that we might get

3 from some of these changes.

4 The second point, the consumer reaction to

5 and the effectiveness of restaurant nutrition

6 information. Does it make a difference if we list

7 the information about the calories, the fat, the

8 sodium next to the items on the menu list when you

9 go to a fast-food environment?

10 Finally, the consumer\'s dietary behavior

11 and attitudes toward weight management, which

12 obviously encompasses what I have already talked

13 about but gets into the area of physical activity

14 as well.

15 \[Slide\]

16 The second knowledge gap is the

17 relationship between obesity and food consumption

18 patterns. Where we are going there is essentially

19 the relationship between obesity and the frequency

20 of foods consumed in different locations. The

21 target there is to examine the impact of consuming

22 food in the home environment versus the fast-food

57

1 environment versus a restaurant environment, and

2 does it make a difference in terms of the frequency

3 and the types of foods that are consumed in those

4 environments?

5 Also, we recognize that there is an

6 important impact of both socioeconomic status in

7 this as well as ethnic background, and there is a

8 very clear need to generate data in relation to

9 both of those issues.

10 Finally in this second knowledge gap are

11 the factors that actually contribute to overeating.

12 Obviously, those are encompassed with many of the

13 things I have already discussed, but what is the

14 role of the super-size portion in all of this, and

15 that really needs to be investigated. I am just

16 using that as an example of factors that would

17 contribute to overeating.

18 \[Slide\]

19 The second area is in relation to

20 formulation research, and really what this was

21 addressing was what do we know about the factors

22 that will drive reformulation to develop healthier

58

1 foods? The questions that were posed there were

2 whether current regulations offer a barrier or an

3 incentive to the production of healthier foods.

4 The research that is currently ongoing there is

5 that there are currently discussions with key

6 industry personnel, and this is being done through

7 a third-party contractor, so that we can get some

8 insight into the barrier and regulatory hurdles

9 that may be present that could impact product

10 reformulation to develop healthier food.

11 The third bullet there gets into the

12 issues focused on manufacturers\--what they can put

13 on the label; what claims they can make; possible

14 changes in regulations that would facilitate

15 healthier foods; and what incentives we may be able

16 to put in place, as a regulatory agency, that would

17 encourage the development of healthier foods.

18 \[Slide\]

19 So, the third knowledge gap in relation to

20 this product reformulation is where do we need to

21 go? What do we need to do? We really need to

22 further explore these barriers. As I said, there

59

1 is research that is going to give some pointers but

2 the three key areas there are, firstly, do

3 incentives, e.g., label prominence, impact industry

4 on the development of healthier foods. What is

5 going to drive them to do that? Do the barriers,

6 e.g., regulatory hurdles, have an impact on the

7 development of healthier foods? We really need to

8 understand that, understand what those hurdles are

9 and, if possible, see what we can do to get around

10 them. Obviously, the third point there, once we

11 have tried to balance the incentives and the

12 hurdles, is how can these be addressed.

13 \[Slide\]

14 The next area in relation to drugs,

15 devices, food additives and dietary supplements\--as

16 I mentioned, this was not a primary focus for the

17 reasons that I have already given.

18 \[Slide\]

19 However, we did identify one knowledge gap

20 here that we thought was important. That was the

21 potential for FDA-regulated products to be

22 unintentionally contributing to the obesity

60

1 problem. The two points there were to consider

2 whether weight gain may be an unintended and

3 unrecognized complication of certain medications.

4 Obviously, there are examples of that. A research

5 gap here or a research need is that this has not

6 been consistently measured. It has not been

7 consistently evaluated, and we need to consider

8 whether this should be an adverse effect that has

9 to be taken into account in the approval of a drug.

10 So the sub-bullets there are that, first

11 of all, we have to determine if this is a problem.

12 We identified it as a knowledge gap, and I

13 emphasize knowledge gap. We have to figure out

14 whether it is a problem that needs to be addressed.

15 Then, obviously, the corollary of that is

16 to develop animal models to study the long-term

17 effects on weight management and medications.

18 Obviously, animal models can go in many other

19 directions too but the issue of unintended

20 consequences of a drug that is taken for a

21 completely unrelated reason could be tested through

22 appropriate animal models.

61

1 \[Slide\]

2 Finally, there is the basic science

3 component of this. I mentioned the three areas:

4 Neonatal imprinting, and where we were going there

5 was to try to get a better understanding of the

6 impact of developmental programming, particularly

7 during early development so, obviously, fetal

8 exposure, neonatal exposure, infant exposure when

9 these metabolic pathways are being

10 established\--does what mommy eats when she is

11 pregnant, does what the neonate is fed or the young

12 infant fed, what is the impact of that on

13 subsequent development of obesity? Part of our

14 thinking on neonatal imprinting was the impact of

15 infant formula often on childhood obesity and

16 subsequent adult obesity. Certainly, an area there

17 that is of interest is the push towards different

18 types of formula, without really I think major

19 consideration on the impact of the obesity issue in

20 relation to new formulas.

21 The second area is obviously the \"omics\"

22 issue to identify susceptibilities. This is really

62

1 getting at linking genetic susceptibilities.

2 Obviously, this goes beyond just the susceptibility

3 to obesity but the susceptibility of obese people

4 to develop other problems such as type 2 diabetes.

5 A clear area there is through genomics and

6 subsequently proteomics and then metabolomics to

7 really get a better handle on how that all fits

8 together.

9 Finally, the effects of caloric

10 restriction, and over the last ten years NCTR has

11 placed some emphasis on this. They have been

12 working on that and have been looking at the effect

13 of caloric restriction, and this is in relation to

14 free radical formation, malignant tumor rates and

15 \"less than ad lib\" feeding on rapid weight

16 reduction. so, there is also a need there in terms

17 of further research.

18 \[Slide\]

19 The fifth knowledge gap relates to this

20 area of translational research, and we felt that it

21 was essential that FDA use basic research to drive

22 and develop regulatory policies. This is obviously

63

1 going to be especially with NIH but also many or

2 the other stakeholders.

3 Just as a small aside there, I was

4 recently at a meeting at NIH where I presented some

5 of what we have been doing and, interestingly,

6 while there was a lot of discussion about the basic

7 metabolic pathways and many of the potential drug

8 therapies that Dr. Orloff discussed were raised,

9 the group really was beginning to focus on that

10 obviously a lot of this is about calories, and to

11 get a better understanding of caloric management

12 and some of the \"social\" sciences around food

13 intake.

14 But the knowledge gaps here include

15 obviously the area of getting a better

16 understanding of developmental imprinting, the use

17 of \"omics\" and the development of animal models for

18 the effects of diet, drug therapy and long-term

19 weight maintenance. So, there are some common

20 themes there.

21 \[Slide\]

22 To conclude, obviously, calories are a

64

1 critical element and the research that we were

2 focused on was really how can we, having taken that

3 basic premise that calories are what this is all

4 about\--how can we focus our research to get at

5 that. Probably the most critical element of all of

6 this is understanding consumers. We need to

7 understand food labeling and how the consumers

8 react to it; their eating habits and their weight

9 management. When we have a better understanding of

10 that, we can then use food labels, education

11 programs or whatever to try to move in the right

12 direction.

13 The third point there is the development

14 of healthier foods. I have already discussed that

15 obviously in the context of what can we do as a

16 regulatory agency to encourage healthier food

17 development, and then, finally, the input from

18 basic research in the development of regulatory

19 policy which is always an underpinning, the good

20 science has to be there first to move forward.

21 Thank you very much.

22 DR. SHINE: Thank you very much. We have

65

1 an opportunity now, before our break, to engage our

2 three speakers on any issues that the committee

3 would like to raise. What kinds of questions or

4 issues would you like to inquire about? Xavier?

5 DR. PI-SUNYER: I would just like to ask

6 Dr. Orloff\--I agree with him completely about the

7 need to do studies of combination therapy to look

8 at either the safety or the efficacy of combination

9 drugs, but as he knows and I know, the drug

10 companies only want to test their own drug and not

11 a combination because of the expense of doing that.

12 So, how would he propose that this get done?

13 DR. ORLOFF: Well, the first thing is that

14 this is a problem obviously, as you point out,

15 during the patent life of drugs. I suppose, to

16 some extent, the community would have to give

17 thought to really how large and long the

18 combination therapy trials might actually have to

19 be. Again, I am just thinking off the top of my

20 head here but it occurs to me that if the long-term

21 safety and efficacy of the individual products has

22 been established as a basis on which they have been

66

1 approved by the FDA, then that principle stands

2 and, obviously, on a case-by-case basis this would

3 have to be considered but it seems reasonable to

4 think that we might be able to prove principle of

5 efficacy and acceptable safety of combinations,

6 perhaps not to the standards of directing labeling

7 but certainly to a standards that would provide

8 some guidance to physicians in this field, thus,

9 standards for publication in peer-reviewed journals

10 which, for better or for worse, is not always the

11 same as standards for labeling. So, that is one

12 possibility.

13 FDA cannot force drug companies to do

14 trials with drugs other than their own unless, I

15 suppose, there was some clear-cut rationale, for

16 example, that the combination of drug with another

17 was such that it spared toxicity of the proprietary

18 drug and FDA stated that they would be really

19 unwilling to approve\--and this would be precedent

20 setting\--the proprietary drug at its optimal

21 effective dose but would consider approving it in

22 combination with another product which was still

67

1 effective, the two together, but where the toxicity

2 was spared. Those are just a few thoughts.

3 DR. SHINE: Dr. Orloff, just to follow-up

4 on another element here, you quite appropriately

5 showed that obesity is a chronic illness and that

6 it is likely that one might have to think about it

7 much like hypertension in that it may require

8 lifetime treatment. What do we know about the

9 capacity to select individuals who, in fact, might

10 be most effectively treated with drugs long term in

11 terms of either their behavioral characteristics or

12 their genetic characteristics? That is, could one

13 stratify the obese population into categories where

14 it would make more sense to make major efforts with

15 drug therapy as opposed to other kinds of

16 approaches?

17 DR. ORLOFF: I don\'t think we have that

18 information available to us. I am certainly not

19 the expert to give the definitive answer but what

20 you have touched on is clearly a problem that is

21 active in all areas of medical therapeutics, and it

22 is the great hope for obesity, as well as you

68

1 suggested for hypertension and other sort of risk

2 factor modification approaches to disease

3 prevention, that we would be better up-front at

4 identifying patients, on the one hand, who are at

5 greatest risk for the sequelae\--and we are better

6 and better at doing that for cardiovascular disease

7 risk based on biomarkers and such\--but, on the

8 other hand, are likely to benefit most from the

9 drug from the standpoint of, for example,

10 pharmacogenomic directed responsiveness. I don\'t

11 know if anybody else around the table\--Dr.

12 Pi-Sunyer, if you have any thoughts on where the

13 state of the science is there.

14 DR. PI-SUNYER: No, I think that is a very

15 good point but I think we are not there in terms of

16 knowledge that we can select people who we know

17 will get a better effect or are less likely to have

18 safety problems with a drug than others.

19 DR. SHINE: I am fascinated by the

20 implications of the fat gene argument made by Jerry

21 Diamond and a number of other people, including the

22 Rockefeller people, and the question again of

69

1 whether over some period of time we could identify

2 targets that are more likely to be responsive than

3 others.

4 Both of you touched on this, but in terms

5 of the science one of the biggest gaps we have is

6 the research on behavior and how and in what way we

7 can influence behavior. We know that for a whole

8 variety of other addictions the only way that one

9 is usually successful in dealing with tobacco or

10 alcohol, or whatever, is total cessation.

11 Unfortunately, that doesn\'t work for obesity.

12 DR. ORLOFF: Yes, I think it is an

13 interesting point that overall poor or less than

14 satisfactory outcomes in obesity treatment, even in

15 patients who remain on drugs, is a combination

16 likely of at least two factors. One is perhaps

17 that in truth the efficacy of the drug wanes but

18 probably more than likely because the behavioral

19 components that determine the ultimate success of

20 the intervention are, you know, that the patient

21 falls off the wagon, if you will. I talked about

22 the concept of drug cycling, which I gather is

70

1 utilized by a number of obesity docs. The degree

2 to which it is successful after the first couple of

3 cycles I think is in question.

4 DR. SHINE: Dr. Swanson?

5 DR. SWANSON: This is a question for Dr.

6 Acheson. Building on the behavioral issue, we all

7 know that part of the issue is that calories count

8 but it is an intake-output balance that is

9 necessary. Was the consideration of how to

10 motivate people to expend more energy or some kind

11 of a link between X number of calories\--to eat this

12 thing that contains X number of calories you would

13 need to expend so many steps? Or, was that out of

14 scope because it is kind of out of FDA\'s purview?

15 DR. ACHESON: Well, it certainly was

16 discussed, Dr. Swanson. The issue of caloric

17 balance is obviously input-output. Unfortunately

18 FDA can\'t regulate exercise. If we could, maybe we

19 would solve the problem. But what we did there, we

20 had a number of presentations from people who are

21 involved in that.

22 For example, the VA has a program that

71

1 they are just initiating called \"Move\" in which

2 they are essentially identifying their obese at

3 various points through their healthcare system and

4 enrolling them, as much as possible, in some kind

5 of exercise and weight management program. So,

6 they are trying to tackle it from both sides. Our

7 approach was, well, what can we do on a label, etc.

8 that is going to have an impact, and that is half

9 the story. You are right, it is not just

10 understanding caloric intake; it is also output.

11 So, we didn\'t ignore it. We need to partner with

12 people to try to get that piece across.

13 DR. SWANSON: I just think that,

14 considered from a prevention aspect, rather than

15 targeting obese or overweight people and this is

16 what you need to get the pounds off, another

17 approach that I really haven\'t seen is how do you

18 prevent the pounds from going on, and you can have

19 the super-size meal if you walk to a certain

20 restaurant versus driving.

21 DR. ACHESON: I totally agree and that is

22 part of understanding consumer behavior. There is

72

1 no question that that is important. Also, I think

2 let\'s try and get in there and prevent the problem

3 before it ever starts.

4 DR. SHINE: Let me follow-up on that. The

5 experience with tobacco is that you can do

6 substantial amounts of public education. You can

7 probably change the overall attitudes of a subject

8 but, in fact, much of the progress made in tobacco

9 was related to taxing tobacco; to changing the

10 environment in which people could smoke, and so

11 forth. In the case of obesity, clearly there is no

12 population that is at greater risk than children

13 where, on the one hand as Dr. Swanson points out,

14 physical exercise\--gym is often gone from the

15 curriculum but, on the other hand, they are being

16 exposed to a substantial amount of fast foods.

17 I was impressed by the way in which in

18 your focus groups you identified that consumers

19 like to get the information about a group of foods

20 that they would likely eat together, the burger

21 example of the combination of fries, Cokes, and so

22 on and so forth. My question is whether an

73

1 appropriate target would be schools and school

2 administrators around the combination of what kids

3 are eating in school to try to educate them and

4 their parents as to what the risks are in having

5 access to what in many institutions is just awful.

6 Now, some school districts are clearly making an

7 attempt to modify that but changing the environment

8 by virtue of changing what is available to kids

9 might be a very important strategy here, and there

10 the FDA might be able to come up with some labeling

11 activities, similar to the way in which you have

12 grouped the information about burgers, in a way

13 that would be useful to administrators and PTAs.

14 DR. ACHESON: I agree with you. It does

15 focus on the product population which is possibly

16 the primary target here. I think that is one

17 avenue to pursue. Obviously, schools have many

18 things that they have to deal with and think about,

19 and this would just be one component of managing a

20 child\'s life, so to speak, to try to control their

21 diet.

22 That speaks also to developing educational

74

1 programs to help parents understand the importance

2 of caloric balance for their children. Maybe that

3 could be done through the schools as well,

4 potentially working with the school lunch program,

5 for example, to try to think about healthier foods

6 in that context. So, I agree with you. It is

7 certainly an avenue that one should consider.

8 DR. SHINE: What I am arguing about is not

9 just about the education; it is actually changing

10 the environment in a substantial way. Dr. Roses?

11 DR. ROSES: I was also going to make the

12 point about the only reason that we eat is so we

13 can burn the calories, and if you are only

14 measuring one side of the equation as part of the

15 studies that are done and as part of the advice we

16 give we may be just dealing with, one might say, a

17 minor part of the problem.

18 I was pleased to hear that there is now an

19 acceptability that we are genetically different and

20 we have different susceptibilities, and some of us

21 will gain weight on different calories and others

22 won\'t. But I think, rather than be in the second

75

1 point about \"omics\" as if there were some magic in

2 applying techniques to biological problems, there

3 is some evidence already that we can stratify

4 populations by their genetic polymorphisms. For

5 instance, this room could be stratified by your

6 blood types. However, just in the beginning state,

7 the science called pharmacogenetics is applying

8 that to responders versus non-responders the

9 extremes of a drug trial.

10 With our experience with a recent

11 candidate, in a very small study which is in the

12 public domain and I can show it if you like in a

13 single slide, we were able to put stratifying

14 markers in a very simple way on people who were the

15 big responders and people who could not respond and

16 people who, by the way, had a difference in weight

17 gain if they gained weight on the drug.

18 The third part has to do with head-to-head

19 trials. Head-to-head trials take the average group

20 of patients and they test them against a drug. But

21 in the world of stratification comparing one third

22 that might respond that might respond in this group

76

1 with the one third that might respond in this group

2 is not really head-to-head, and it is now possible

3 to stratify people by their metabolic enzymes, by

4 their markers, by a variety of other things so that

5 we can truly do, if you are interested in making

6 that a gold standard, head-to-head trials that at

7 least have some common denominators.

8 DR. SHINE: Any comments? If not, I am

9 going to take the chair\'s prerogative and go to a

10 break. We are going to have an opportunity after

11 the next speaker to have a continued discussion,

12 and I presume you will be available for further

13 conversation. Let\'s go ahead and take a break. We

14 will reconvene at 9:45. Thank you.

15 \[Brief recess\]

16 DR. SHINE: We will come back to our

17 discussion after the next presentation. We are

18 pleased that Alan Rulis, Senior Advisor for Special

19 Projects in the Center for Food Safety and Applied

20 Nutrition, will tell us about the highlights of the

21 obesity working group report. Alan?

22 Highlights of the Obesity Working Group Report

77

1 DR. RULIS: Thank you, Chairman.

2 \[Slide\]

3 I am Alan Rulis. I am currently Senior

4 Advisor for Special Projects in the Center for Food

5 Safety and Applied Nutrition. I have been involved

6 with the obesity working group writing team and

7 throughout the process of putting that report

8 together.

9 To summarize very briefly, the report

10 recommends a number of thrusts in several different

11 areas that you are all aware of now, in particular

12 the food label and in particular there calories,

13 serving size, claims and so forth, even the issue

14 of carbohydrates. We have recommendations in the

15 report about enforcement against products with

16 misleading weight loss claims and, as you have

17 heard this morning, there are sections that deal

18 with therapeutics and research.

19 \[Slide\]

20 What I would like to focus on in my

21 presentation is a couple of other areas that are

22 extremely important to the success of FDA\'s efforts

78

1 to stem the tide of obesity. They relate to

2 education and restaurants, under the rubric of

3 trying to find means by which we can get around the

4 table the people involved in these issues, not just

5 the agency but stakeholders, educators, industry,

6 consumer groups, and so forth, to discuss next

7 steps and to move forward, to make some sort of

8 forward progress.

9 In that regard, the report does recommend

10 in fact that the FDA use a third-party facilitator

11 as a convener to essentially create a national

12 dialogue on obesity. So, what I would like to

13 cover in my remarks this morning are some slides

14 that relate to development of that national

15 dialogue by means of a facilitator to get the

16 discussion going.

17 I looked over my slides and realized that

18 25 of my 30 slides are really questions. Of the

19 last 12, 9 of them are questions to the Board. So,

20 my slides will be primarily in that vein, looking

21 forward to your insights, comments, recommendations

22 and feedback to us.

79

1 As I said, the report does in fact

2 recommend that FDA work through a facilitator to

3 provide a forum for stakeholders to seek a

4 consensus-based approach that addresses two

5 specific aspects of obesity in the United States,

6 in particular, developing options for providing

7 voluntary nutrition information for foods consumed

8 away from home, for example in the restaurant

9 setting and, secondly, education to combat product

10 obesity.

11 The reasons are quite obvious. We know

12 that Americans now spend about 46 percent of their

13 food budget on food eaten outside the home, as our

14 report states. We also know that body weight and

15 trends towards obesity that begin at puberty or in

16 adolescence are often propagated through adulthood

17 and are very difficult to reverse. So, we think

18 that those are two prime areas for establishing a

19 dialogue.

20 \[Slide\]

21 With respect to foods eaten away from

22 home, we imagined putting together a contract for a

80

1 facilitator to start the dialogue and we imagined

2 having the facilitator address the following

3 questions: What nutrition information would be the

4 most helpful for consumers to have before ordering

5 food in a restaurant?

6 \[Slide\]

7 What are the best options for providing

8 nutrition information in a restaurant setting? We

9 have had many discussions with the restaurant

10 industry throughout the course of the obesity

11 working group\'s efforts focused on this question.

12 It is a complicated question because the restaurant

13 industry is very diverse. There are quick service

14 restaurants where people walk in and get their meal

15 right away and there are others where there are

16 white tablecloths and meals are prepared to order,

17 and there are a lot of specific changes that are

18 made to menu items by the cook. It is very

19 difficult to say that there is one set of best

20 options, of course.

21 \[Slide\]

22 Should nutrition information be listed for

81

1 all menu items or just some items? What are the

2 practical considerations there? If we do have

3 restaurants put information on some menu items,

4 then what criteria should determine which items

5 should have nutrition information listed? We have,

6 as a matter of fact, a very interesting menu right

7 now in the agency from a major chain restaurant

8 that has caloric information next to all of the

9 menu items and it is very interesting, very

10 remarkable to look at because you are not used to

11 seeing it but it can be done and it is there.

12 \[Slide\]

13 When providing nutrition information in

14 the restaurant setting, what consideration should

15 be given to the differences between chain and

16 non-chain restaurants? Of course, that relates to

17 the whole question of the diversity of that segment

18 of the industry.

19 \[Slide\]

20 How should restaurants tailor the kinds of

21 nutrition information presented based on expected

22 clientele? You can imagine the need there to focus

82

1 the kinds of information that is presented to the

2 type of restaurant and the clientele that frequent

3 that restaurant.

4 \[Slide\]

5 Number six, should nutrition information

6 be presented in context, for example, as a percent

7 of daily value, comparing for example to a 2,000

8 calorie per day diet or, for example, comparing to

9 other menu items? This is something that I think

10 many consumers would find very helpful, the notion

11 that when you walk into a restaurant and order an

12 item off the menu, you have some sense of whether

13 consuming that item is going to comprise 20 percent

14 or 80 percent or 150 percent of your normal daily

15 caloric intake. That sort of feel for what that

16 meal represents would be extremely helpful we think

17 to restaurant patrons.

18 \[Slide\]

19 Number seven, how should FDA proceed to

20 encourage restaurants to participate in a voluntary

21 pilot program to test various options? In the

22 obesity working group report we say as part of the

83

1 recommendations that we would like to see a pilot

2 study conducted that would get into the question,

3 in specific terms, about how such nutrition

4 information, caloric information for example, could

5 be placed at the point of sale for consumers to

6 use, and we envision the restaurant industry coming

7 with ideas about this. We don\'t envision the FDA

8 funding and creating such a pilot study out of thin

9 air. This is the kind of thing that would need to

10 be done around the table, in communication with the

11 industry and, thus, again the idea of a third-party

12 facilitator.

13 \[Slide\]

14 Number eight, how can industry and Food

15 and Drug Administration measure the effectiveness

16 of providing nutrition information to consumers in

17 restaurants? One of the things we learned in our

18 deliberations in the obesity working group is that

19 information itself doesn\'t really necessarily

20 answer the concern; that imparting information to

21 people can be done but it is not necessarily

22 absorbed and, once absorbed, it does not

84

1 necessarily change behavior. So, I think a

2 pertinent question that we would pose to our

3 third-party facilitator would be to get at the

4 answer to this question.

5 \[Slide\]

6 On the subject of pediatric

7 nutrition/obesity education, we have similar

8 questions that we would like a facilitator to help

9 us address. On what age groups is it most

10 appropriate for Food and Drug Administration to

11 focus education efforts? This is a sociological

12 question as much as a pharmacodynamic one.

13 \[Slide\]

14 What are the most appropriate settings,

15 for example school or home, health settings, social

16 organizations or clubs, for such educational

17 efforts? Again, those of us who were on the

18 obesity working group are well aware that there are

19 many groups which have spent years working on these

20 kinds of issues and know a lot about imparting

21 information to children, to families and the

22 pitfalls of trying to create an awareness about

85

1 such subjects as obesity and then to change

2 behavior. It is very complicated. It is almost an

3 art form. It is something that I think many of us

4 at the agency are feeling like we really do need to

5 have a participatory discussion about and, again,

6 is another reason for having a third-party

7 facilitator bring in people with different areas of

8 expertise to get around this question.

9 \[Slide\]

10 Another question on the pediatric

11 nutrition/obesity education issue is how important

12 is it for education efforts to be conducted using

13 mass media, for example television, radio and

14 print? When I think of adolescents today, they are

15 wired, they are electronic, they are not reading

16 newspapers; they are plugged in and they can be

17 reached very effectively in many ways through the

18 Internet, through the media, through the various

19 things that they are tuned into constantly. So, we

20 need to be contemporaneous here. We can\'t be

21 thinking in terms of 20th century communication

22 tools.

86

1 \[Slide\]

2 Over what time period should an education

3 effort be extended to achieve optimal impact and

4 lasting effects? Another thing we learned in our

5 deliberations in the group was that education is

6 really not a short-term phenomenon. It is possible

7 to generate messages, to send them out and, you

8 know, clean the dust off your hands and walk away

9 and affect absolutely nothing. What has to happen

10 is that there needs to be a long-term effort that

11 is continuous, that is reinforced and that has

12 mid-course corrections to make it more effective.

13 \[Slide\]

14 What types of messages are the most

15 effective, and in which age groups, for educating

16 children about nutrition and health? Again, this

17 ties back into the question of prevention, the

18 notion that if we can prevent adolescents or young

19 people from starting on a path of being overweight

20 we have done a whale of a lot more than we can do

21 by worrying about how to get people who are

22 currently overweight as adults to lose some weight.

87

1 That is also important but it is extremely

2 important to realize that once that pattern is set

3 it is very hard to reverse.

4 \[Slide\]

5 To what extent should education and/or

6 other types of messages be tailored to different

7 ethnic and/or socioeconomic groups? This is

8 another issue we heard strong signals on in our

9 facilitated discussions during the course of our

10 obesity working group. We are a heterogeneous

11 nation, extremely so and becoming more so. We have

12 large numbers of immigrants coming to our country

13 from different cultures where eating patterns and

14 signals about what is right to eat and what is

15 appropriate to eat, what is appropriate to feed

16 your family are very, very different. Even those

17 of us who have been here a number of generations

18 across our country have very different views about

19 how we eat and what is appropriate. So, we need to

20 be able to tailor our efforts and I think our

21 facilitator needs to be able to help us to do that.

22 \[Slide\]

88

1 Then, what are the effective means that we

2 might be able to find for partnering in the public

3 and private sectors to develop and deliver obesity

4 education? The Department of Health and Human

5 Services has published a proposal in the Federal

6 Register, last summer, that invited comments and

7 suggestions on how to create public/private

8 partnerships on a number of health issues that face

9 the country, and this is one of them. We are I

10 think open to the question. We would put the

11 question to our third-party facilitator. Let\'s get

12 to the essential factors that help us partner with

13 those stakeholder segments out there, the industry

14 segment and the consumer segment and the citizen

15 segment of our country, to get everybody around the

16 table to chew on this issue.

17 It is not simple because the FDA, as a

18 regulatory agency, needs to be careful about how it

19 does those things so it does not present either the

20 appearance or the actuality of favoritism to any

21 one company over other companies, and so forth.

22 But we also do see the value of partnering. A lot

89

1 can be done that isn\'t regulatory in the

2 traditional sense. Talking to and working with

3 effective partners on the outside can be extremely

4 effective, and we would like our facilitator to

5 help us uncover effective examples that are

6 currently operating, and there are some. We, at

7 the FDA, are very familiar with the \"Fight Back\"

8 campaign that was addressing the issue of microbial

9 contamination of food and that is a very effective

10 program that has educated a lot of people and

11 prevented a lot of illness in this country. It is

12 a nice example of how that can work. There are

13 undoubtedly many others and we want to find out

14 what they are, learn about what makes them

15 successful and then adopt the aspects of them that

16 make them successful to the programs that we would

17 generate.

18 \[Slide\]

19 That brings me then to my last dozen

20 slides or so on which there are still nine more

21 questions, and these are really questions that go

22 to the Board, and you have all seen them in your

90

1 materials and I hope you have given them some

2 thought. They are focused on the two prongs of the

3 issue as I have presented them here, namely, the

4 scope of work that we would present to our

5 contractor or third-party facilitator relating to

6 food eaten away from home, and work on pediatric

7 obesity education.

8 Chairman, I would I guess defer to you in

9 terms of how you want to proceed. I can go through

10 these questions quickly if you would like me to

11 just to remind folks of what they are, and then we

12 can kind of revisit them.

13 DR. SHINE: Why don\'t you go through them?

14 DR. RULIS: Okay.

15 \[Slide\]

16 Number one, are FDA\'s proposed questions

17 and issues likely to provide appropriate

18 information to proceed with a pilot program with

19 restaurants? In other words, are we asking the

20 right questions here? Are we missing something

21 obvious? We really need your thoughtful input and

22 your recommendations about that. If we haven\'t hit

91

1 the target right on the head, then can you think of

2 some other questions or issues that should be

3 addressed and that we should have our facilitator

4 focus on?

5 \[Slide\]

6 Secondly, what kind of evaluation is

7 appropriate to assess the effectiveness of a pilot

8 program? As I mentioned, we wanted to get together

9 and have the restaurant industry create some sort

10 of program by which this can occur. I should say

11 very quickly that these programs are already going

12 on out there. You know, McDonalds and other

13 companies have been in the news recently about

14 programs that they are putting together to move the

15 country in the right direction in terms of

16 increased physical activity and wise food choices.

17 So, we are well aware of that. We want to engage

18 with them on something specific in this context and

19 so how do you evaluate the effectiveness of such a

20 program? I think we need your help on that.

21 \[Slide\]

22 What advice would you have for a

92

1 facilitator? If we were to go forward and contract

2 out this work, what advice would you have for a

3 facilitator concerning the basis for evaluating

4 recommendations on providing nutrition information

5 in a restaurant setting? Again, are we targeting

6 this right? Have we asked the right questions or

7 are we missing something obvious?

8 \[Slide\]

9 Fourth, what research would be helpful for

10 a facilitator to know about to help them provide

11 the best guidance to the agency on this subject?

12 Again, you all, on the Board, have many different

13 areas of research that you are familiar with.

14 Perhaps you are aware of some that could be of

15 value for us to hear about on the record today that

16 could help us focus this in the right direction.

17 \[Slide\]

18 Fifth, in view of the materials that you

19 have been provided, is there any other advice or

20 information you believe is important to give the

21 FDA on this issue?

22 \[Slide\]

93

1 That also goes for the pediatric obesity

2 issues as well, and I will go through those

3 questions briefly. Are FDA\'s proposed questions

4 and issues likely to provide appropriate

5 information to guide the development of useful and

6 understandable nutrition/obesity education efforts?

7 I will tell you why I put

8 nutrition/obesity on this slide. In our

9 discussions with people who have been doing this

10 for years, they say one of the things you don\'t do

11 when you talk to adolescents about obesity is use

12 the word \"obesity.\" As I say, it is an art form

13 and children are extremely interested in knowing

14 how to live healthy lives, and they are very

15 conscious of their bodies, their body weights and

16 their physical appearance, and they very definitely

17 want to be healthy. But if you come at them with

18 information that talks about obesity, it is a

19 turnoff. These are things that are sort of the

20 subtleties of this issue that we have to get around

21 and understand.

22 \[Slide\]

94

1 What research would be helpful for a

2 facilitator to know about? Again, this is the same

3 as in the other aspect, to provide the best

4 guidance to the agency on this subject.

5 \[Slide\]

6 What other questions should FDA be asking

7 a facilitator to explore in order to help the

8 agency develop effective educational strategies?

9 \[Slide\]

10 In view of the materials you have been

11 provided, is there any other advice or information

12 you believe is important to give FDA on this issue?

13 \[Slide\]

14 Let me finish by saying just two things

15 here. I have a couple of quotes. One is from Dr.

16 Crawford: \"We\'re going back to basics, designing a

17 comprehensive effort to attack obesity through an

18 aggressive, science-based, consumer-friendly

19 program with the simple message that \'Calories

20 Count.\'\" That really in a sentence summarizes what

21 it is all about on that subject.

22 \[Slide\]

95

1 Our Secretary, Tommy Thompson: \"Counting

2 calories is critical for people trying to achieve

3 and maintain a healthy weight. This new report

4 highlights FDA\'s overall strategy for getting

5 consumers accurate, helpful information that allows

6 them to make wise food choices at home, at

7 supermarkets and in restaurants. Taking small

8 steps to eat a more balanced diet and to stay

9 physically active can go a long way to reversing

10 the epidemic of obesity that harms far too many

11 Americans.\"

12 I think we are at a point where we have

13 written the report and we have delivered the

14 report. The report has recommendations and we now

15 want to move forward with those recommendations to

16 take the next steps. What I have described by way

17 of third-party facilitated national dialogue on

18 these two main issues about restaurants and

19 pediatric obesity are concrete first steps that I

20 think we can take beyond just delivering a report.

21 We look forward to your feedback on these questions

22 and your good guidance to the agency. That is my

96

1 presentation. Thank you.

2 Questions and Discussion with the Board/Presenters

3 DR. SHINE: Thank you very much, Dr.

4 Rulis. I know there are a couple of questions that

5 we were going to come back to with our first two

6 speakers, and we will do that at the end of this

7 session, but I would like to focus over the next

8 few minutes on the challenge from Dr. Rulis with

9 regard to commenting on the charge to the

10 facilitator. I gather he is not asking us the

11 answer to those questions. He is asking us are

12 those the right questions and are there other

13 questions or other approaches that would be

14 important for FDA to undertake. We also have a

15 written copy of these questions. Jim, why don\'t

16 you go ahead?

17 DR. RIVIERE: I just have one comment.

18 Focus groups seems to be the primary mechanism that

19 you are going to ask this facilitator to address

20 these questions, and just that there be a lot of

21 concern about the makeup of those focus groups. It

22 seems trivial, but even from personal experience

97

1 with focus groups, people who will go to focus

2 groups, there is a selection process in that area,

3 especially for some of the questions on teens\--and

4 I still have two teenagers. One has a problem in

5 this area and the other one doesn\'t. You know,

6 same environment; obviously different genetics\--but

7 the point really is in looking at who would

8 participate in this and how you would get them to

9 participate because otherwise your results are

10 going to be strongly biased to people who may not

11 even have a problem to begin with. And I agree, if

12 you say it is an obesity focus group you are not

13 going to get the right target population you want,

14 but just to try to look at some clinical trial

15 sampling protocols to make sure you have a

16 representative group.

17 DR. RULIS: Thank you. Let me just add in

18 response, if I might, that in the course of our

19 deliberations we did have the opportunity to do

20 some focus groups and we did them, and they

21 contributed to the report. But we were all very

22 much aware that, yes, indeed, they are not really

98

1 research; they are focus groups, and that what

2 needs to happen is research that has a much broader

3 and deeper sort of foundation and a long-term

4 lasting effect. So, yes, thank you. I think it is

5 a very important point and we need to keep that

6 very clearly in front of us.

7 DR. SHINE: Susan?

8 DR. HARLANDER: When you mentioned that

9 you were going to get a third-party facilitator

10 involved, I am assuming that that is going to go

11 way beyond consumer-based focus groups. My

12 understanding is that that facilitator would also

13 be engaging the other stakeholders, like the

14 restaurant industry or the food industry\--

15 DR. RULIS: Very definitely.

16 DR. HARLANDER: \--and I think it is

17 critically important to involve stakeholders

18 because food companies and restaurants understand

19 their consumer base and they do a tremendous amount

20 of proprietary research internally that they might

21 be quite willing to share with you under certain

22 circumstances. So, I think industry involvement is

99

1 critical.

2 Personally, I tend to believe that the

3 market is going to sort itself out on this issue.

4 You already see that certain restaurants, if they

5 perceive that their consumers are interested in

6 more healthy alternatives, are including them on

7 the menu already. So, you know, I think that they

8 can bring a tremendous amount of knowledge to what

9 you are trying to do. I guess my understanding is

10 we are going way beyond consumers and will involve

11 the affected industry as well. That is true?

12 DR. RULIS: Yes, thank you.

13 DR. SHINE: Susan, given your background

14 in food science, what is your general reaction to

15 the set of questions that have been raised? Are

16 these the right questions, do you think?

17 DR. HARLANDER: Well, there is one

18 critical question that I would add. I would agree

19 with all the questions that you have but I think

20 one key area is that all of this information that

21 will be provided is not free, and nowhere in the

22 research that I have reviewed prior to this do we

100

1 ask consumers if they are willing to pay for

2 additional information. If we are going to expect

3 the food industry to change their labels, we have

4 to understand that that is not free. You know, it

5 costs money to make all those changes, particularly

6 if analytical work is going to be required. The

7 same will be true for restaurants. They are not

8 typically giving that kind of information to

9 consumers so either they are going to have to use

10 some sort of software package that is going to

11 predict this, which they haven\'t typically used in

12 the past, or they are going to have to do

13 analytical\--they are going to have concerns about

14 liability.

15 So, I think one question I would add is if

16 there are costs associated with that, are consumers

17 willing to pay. I just spoke with one gentleman

18 and we talked about, you know, maybe consumers

19 would be willing to pay more for a smaller bag of

20 French fries than for a larger bag of French fries.

21 If those costs were there, would that influence

22 what consumers would buy? Because I think that

101

1 kind of information would be very helpful as you

2 approach restaurants to try to get them involved.

3 So, I think if there is a cost associated with

4 this, we need to understand that.

5 DR. SHINE: Other comments? Yes, John?

6 DR. THOMAS: I would like to make some

7 comments with respect to focusing on our youngsters

8 and the various inequities in school systems across

9 the country. Certainly, it seems to me, and I am

10 generalizing now because I am sure some schools are

11 much more advanced than others and maybe this is

12 more detail than you are really searching for at

13 this point in time, but establishing under the

14 rubric of PTAs, for example, some sort of

15 nutritional council where, in fact, they bring the

16 PE teacher, the health educator, other dieticians,

17 assuming that particular school board has access to

18 that because I realize there are going to be some

19 small schools that may not have those\--I know, for

20 example, a lot of schools have begun to put

21 restrictions on school vending machines which

22 heretofore was a major source of discretionary

102

1 monies for the school principal where he or she

2 could go out and buy books, or whatever, which

3 otherwise was not funded by their particular

4 budgets.

5 Also, building into that overall concept

6 some sort of notion of nutritional incentive.

7 Weigh these kids at the beginning of the year and

8 see what happens at the end of the year. You know,

9 give them a goal to shoot for. Don\'t just talk

10 about it on the first day and then forget about it.

11 We can\'t change the busing system with

12 respect to physical activities. We all live in the

13 suburbs now so that one is taken away from the

14 pediatric cohort.

15 Finally, I think there needs to be a

16 reemphasis on individual sports in our school

17 systems. Team sports have obviously taken

18 precedence but they need to have lifelong physical

19 activities and we need to encourage them through

20 the physical education departments and whatever

21 structure they have to go forth with lifelong,

22 single competition sports. Nowadays you can\'t even

103

1 get kids to run out to the ball field because it

2 has to be organized. There is no such thing as

3 getting a group of youngsters just to play ball for

4 the fun of it. It has to be a lesson or it has to

5 be a league. Somehow we need to encourage tennis,

6 golf and other things that they are going to do for

7 the rest of their life. Again, I am sure there are

8 schools that are already doing this but it has to

9 be a coordinated effort for these various skill

10 sets.

11 DR. SHINE: Thank you. Other comments?

12 Yes, Cato?

13 DR. LAURENCIN: Well, I would like to echo

14 some of the thoughts that were said earlier. I

15 think that a number of groups are already trying to

16 do this; a number of large chains are already doing

17 this. My one comment is that I think the FDA can

18 be very helpful in terms of young people by trying

19 to keep it simple. I went to one restaurant where

20 the place mats actually had all the nutritional

21 information for all the different foods that they

22 had. I have two doctorate degrees and I was just

104

1 about able to get through it, so I think that a

2 young person might have a difficult time getting

3 through it.

4 We are trying a pilot program at our

5 university where we are labeling the foods in the

6 vending machines with green, yellow and red. The

7 foods that are labeled red have actually five

8 percent surcharge that goes to research. So, these

9 sorts of methodologies are where perhaps the FDA

10 can be helpful in terms of being able to decide

11 what is green, what is yellow and what is red and

12 also, of course, the possibility of recommendations

13 in terms of how we can disseminate this sort of

14 information in terms of what the different levels

15 are, and things like that.

16 One, I think it is important to try and

17 keep it simple in terms of actually trying to help

18 young people. Number two, we can even place some

19 monetary incentives and make that a part of it, and

20 I think it would be good.

21 DR. SHINE: Thank you. Josephine?

22 DR. GRIMA: In recent years the public has

105

1 been bombarded with information about low

2 carbohydrate diets, and although this is not a

3 trend that has been endorsed by the AMA or

4 government associations, the fact of the matter is

5 that that information is out there in the public.

6 I think one of the important things to address is

7 how much information is really the consumer taking

8 in, and I think the facilitator has to use that in

9 their plans in order to educate the public on this.

10 DR. RULIS: Yes, I will just respond

11 briefly on the carbs issue. The carbs issue is

12 front and center right now. It is on a lot of

13 packages we see in the stores and we are well aware

14 that this is an issue that is really crying out for

15 some clarification. As we have stated in our

16 report, we are currently in possession of some

17 petitions that are intending to try to clarify some

18 of these statements on labels and we are working

19 very hard. Those of us who have spent many years

20 at FDA, we relish the opportunity to beat our head

21 against hard problems\--

22 \[Laughter\]

106

1 \--and this is a difficult one because, you

2 know, what is a carb, first of all, and then how do

3 you impart information in a way that is not

4 misleading and, yet, doesn\'t impinge on people\'s

5 right to say things under the First Amendment?

6 These are difficult questions but we look forward

7 to trying to solve them.

8 DR. SHINE: Susan?

9 DR. HARLANDER: I just have one reaction

10 to what Cato brought up. I think that there is a

11 lot of concern about labeling foods as good foods

12 or bad foods, and that you will get a lot more

13 cooperation from the food industry and the

14 restaurant industry if any food, whether it is a

15 green dot, yellow dot or a red dot, can fit into a

16 balanced diet, and it has a lot to do with how much

17 you are going to consume of that. But I think

18 there is a lot of concern about is something going

19 to be categorized as a bad food as a result of some

20 of these efforts, and it might create some lack of

21 willingness to cooperate.

22 DR. SHINE: Yes, Xavier?

107

1 DR. PI-SUNYER: I think you get around

2 that by talking about total calories, and you get

3 around the carbohydrate issue also by talking about

4 total calories, which I think is what the FDA is

5 trying to do. I think the really important thing

6 is how many calories people are eating in relation

7 to how much exercise they are doing.

8 I would just like to say a couple of

9 things. Number one is that I think it would be

10 nice if the FDA would collaborate with other HHS

11 agencies on these campaigns. For instance, CDC is

12 very much involved with the physical activity

13 aspect of trying to educate the public, and it

14 would seem to me that eventually, if and when the

15 FDA goes out with an educational program for

16 raising the consciousness of the American people or

17 to raise the consciousness of the restaurants, or

18 whatever, that there be kind of a concerted effort

19 with agencies like the CDC which are working on the

20 other side, which is the expenditure side. That is

21 number one.

22 Number two, I think that the main emphasis

108

1 really ought to be on prevention. I agree with Dr.

2 Swanson completely that weight loss is extremely

3 difficult, and it is expensive, and it is hard to

4 do and it is hard to maintain. What I think the

5 message needs to be for children and for adults is

6 to control their weight. The average American is

7 gaining an enormous amount of weight every year and

8 over a decade they are gaining between 10 and 20

9 pounds. So, what we want to do is to prevent that

10 weight gain from age 21 or age 18 on, and I think

11 that is where the focus really ought to be of the

12 campaign.

13 DR. SHINE: Dr. Crawford is going to

14 comment, but again, looking at the questions that

15 you were asked, are these the right questions for a

16 facilitator? Are you comfortable with the

17 direction that this is taking?

18 DR. PI-SUNYER: Well, I am comfortable

19 with that direction. I think we need to know more

20 about behavior but, you know, the trouble is that

21 we do know quite a bit about behavior already,

22 particularly from other campaigns with tobacco and

109

1 other substances of abuse, and I think changing

2 behavior is very hard. I am not sure that these

3 focus groups are going to give you the answers

4 totally that you are looking for.

5 I do think talking to the focus groups,

6 particularly about the labeling, is very important

7 because clearly, as Cato says, you don\'t want to

8 give them a label that they are not going to be

9 able to read or that they are going to throw up

10 their hands and say I don\'t understand this. So, I

11 think the whole label reading aspect of this focus

12 group initiative is very good.

13 DR. CRAWFORD: Your question about

14 coordination within HHS was a good one. The way

15 Secretary Thompson dealt with this as he moved this

16 towards the top of his priority list was that, as I

17 mentioned, about a year ago he caused NIH, CDC and

18 FDA to put together these in-depth studies, headed

19 up by working groups chaired by the deputies at

20 each one of those organizations. I was the one who

21 chaired the FDA one.

22 Then, one week about three months ago each

110

1 of the agencies presented their findings to the

2 public. It was obesity week for Secretary Thompson

3 and he had three separate and then one unified

4 press conference. At that point, the Department of

5 Health and Human Services took over the public

6 education initiative. FDA\'s role will be to feed

7 into that, as will the CDC\'s. That initiative of

8 education has begun with an ad council campaign.

9 Then it will be followed up with some more in-depth

10 approach as we attempt to reach all strata of

11 American society. The message will be refined. It

12 will be more sophisticated as it moves forward from

13 the base, which is like a cartoon type presentation

14 which is called sometimes the \"body parts\"

15 presentation because in the most famous one of

16 those ads someone is walking through a supermarket

17 aisle and there is some protoplasm on the floor,

18 and a little girl asks her parent what is that on

19 the floor, and the parent responds it looks like

20 someone lost their double chin from eating well.

21 \[Laughter\]

22 It is a very catchy campaign. I am

111

1 compelled to say so and that is how we get

2 coordinated.

3 DR. SHINE: Let me just follow-up on this

4 for a minute. I think there is a real question

5 here to understand the niche of the FDA in this

6 area. I think one needs to explore very carefully,

7 not only in terms of the federal agencies but state

8 health departments, medical associations and others

9 who are confronting this problem at local

10 communities. Changing this with national publicity

11 creates a certain kind of environment, if you will.

12 But where the rubber hits the road is going to be

13 concerted efforts in communities that will address

14 all of the elements. We have talked about

15 restaurants and schools but what about company

16 cafeterias and the whole question of whether, in

17 fact, it is economically desirable to a company

18 which has X amount of turnover to be paying Y

19 amount of dollars in order to minimize the obesity

20 that goes on in that company because it might help

21 them save healthcare costs with diabetics and

22 hypertensives, but that depends on turnover.

112

1 So, the kinds of programs that we are

2 talking about are going to be partnerships. They

3 are going to be efforts to get the media, to get

4 the schools, to get industry to relate to this

5 issue of everything from bike lanes to exercise or

6 fitness programs in companies.

7 My point is that I think the extent to

8 which the facilitator can really hone in\--the

9 agency is famous for its capacity to analyze

10 science and to find science-based information which

11 could form the basis of all of these programs.

12 Articulating that, modifying that, working on that

13 so that it is part of these overall programs is

14 going to be key. Therefore, I would urge them to

15 look fairly broadly as to what we are talking about

16 and I think, again, I would not exclude state

17 health departments. I wouldn\'t exclude both urban

18 and rural environments as places to understand what

19 the niche is.

20 I would also suggest to you that

21 increasingly in 8th grade biology there is an

22 interest of young people about their bodies, and so

113

1 forth. Anorexia-bulimia has been a major target

2 for those educational programs. The question is

3 whether those educational programs could provide a

4 balanced view of diet, exercise, and so forth, and

5 is the FDA an ideal source of information packages

6 and materials that could be used in public schools?

7 With all due respect to USDA, I worry about the

8 USDA\'s way of presenting that. Perhaps between the

9 two agencies one might be able to come up with

10 material that would be part of the curriculum in

11 terms of that.

12 Finally, I want to emphasize, as I

13 mentioned before about tobacco, that everything we

14 have learned about changing behavior has to do with

15 not just the information but changing the

16 environment, whether it is because you pay more or

17 whether because something is accessible or not.

18 Therefore, when you talk about children, I happen

19 to think that is where an enormous amount of the

20 focus should be. I think the public cares about

21 their kids. I think they will often do one thing

22 and do something else for their kids. So, as far

114

1 as they are concerned, starting in kindergarten,

2 the environment in which they are living will make

3 an enormous difference as to what their lifetime

4 habits are. So, I don\'t think you can start too

5 early. Although I have focused on the 8th grade

6 biology course, the fact is that if a second grader

7 sees vending machines all around with high cal food

8 or high fat food, they are going to assume that it

9 is part of the environment in which they live. So,

10 I think the emphasis on pediatrics is extremely

11 important but that one ought to think about it in

12 terms of how and in what way you can use the data

13 that you have to change the environment in terms of

14 what is available to people. Katherine?

15 DR. SWANSON: Kind of building on the

16 notion that behavior is important, I personally

17 think that your question related to how do you

18 measure effectiveness is the most important one.

19 If you go down the path of trying all of these

20 different concepts and you don\'t have a way to

21 measure behavior change\--not just what people say

22 they will do but what they will do\--you really

115

1 won\'t be able to target what is going to have the

2 biggest impact. So, I would make sure that that

3 question might be thought of first with every

4 strategy that you are looking at, how would we

5 impact the magnitude of the change.

6 Another thing to consider with regard to

7 the restaurants, listing the calories I think is

8 very interesting. The segregation out of healthy

9 choices is another. Another option that would be

10 very interesting to explore that would be

11 applicable to the white tablecloth restaurants as

12 well would be smaller portion sizes. I mean, many

13 of us who are on the road all the time and you go

14 to the restaurant and you simply cannot eat all of

15 the food that is put on your plate, and would you

16 be able to pay not half as much because there are

17 labor costs there, but offering multiple service

18 sizes might be a very interesting thing to study

19 because if you reduce it by half you have cut your

20 calory intake in half.

21 One more question that you might want to

22 add is, is there a way that you can link the

116

1 caloric intake piece to the caloric output piece in

2 some kind of a message?

3 DR. SHINE: Thank you, Katherine. I would

4 suggest that I would like a facilitator to create a

5 model for continuous quality improvement in this

6 area. What I mean by that is we don\'t know what

7 works. We don\'t know what will not work. We need

8 a concept that there is a lot of experimentation

9 going on to learn from that what impact it has, and

10 then constantly reassess how and in what way we are

11 using our activity. I think the notion is that it

12 is for the long haul. I think that looking at that

13 in terms of socioeconomic status, ethnic groups,

14 and so forth, is going to be pretty central

15 because, in fact, they may behave very differently

16 and it is not at all clear to me, once you get the

17 data and put something in place, that it will work

18 in the same way in a variety of settings. So, I

19 think that notion of what is the long-term model

20 for constantly reassessing where one is and where

21 do you get the data, how do you get the data, what

22 are you trying to measure in order to make those

117

1 decisions would be an important part of how to

2 conceptualize this.

3 Incidentally, we were talking at the break

4 about differences in terms of environment and

5 culture. You might be interested to know that the

6 Japanese, about a year or two ago, redid the

7 height/weight tables for boys because the boys are

8 getting so much bigger and putting on more weight.

9 They are also getting higher cholesterol levels,

10 incidentally. But girls are not. The culture in

11 Japan is so focused on young women being thin that

12 they have shown no change in the height/weight

13 environment. So, these cultural elements make an

14 enormous difference in terms of how people behave.

15 Other comments?

16 DR. THOMAS: Just a couple of follow-up

17 points, and these are certainly not revelations but

18 I would strongly urge as you look at behavioral

19 profiles that you make every effort to get a

20 quantifiable endpoint. That is almost a

21 contradiction when you are dealing with behavior,

22 but as you go into this I think you really need to

118

1 look at those endpoints.

2 The other thing, I was struck by the

3 simplicity of the color coding that Cato mentioned.

4 While it has a downside and you can get into the

5 good and bad foods, I think the general public

6 would be more inclined to relate to that that as

7 opposed to getting hung up on numbers. So, a plea

8 would be that if you try to quantify these sorts of

9 things and use a color code, keep it simple. Even

10 though there are some downsides to that, I would

11 encourage your work groups to look at that.

12 DR. RULIS: Great, thank you.

13 DR. SHINE: What I heard, particularly

14 from Xavier\'s comments, is that the color code

15 might have more to do with caloric density, for

16 example, than value judgments about bad and good,

17 and I think that is an important observation.

18 DR. PI-SUNYER: There is actually quite a

19 lot of research on color coding, mostly out of Les

20 Epstein\'s lab at University of Syracuse. He has

21 done a lot of work on treating children for weight

22 loss and weight maintenance using color codes for

119

1 children, which for them is a lot simpler, and he

2 has gotten very nice results doing that. That is

3 an observation.

4 DR. SHINE: This is a little bit of a

5 digression because this is a question Allen Roses

6 wanted to raise before. Allen wanted to show just

7 one slide which was relevant to our earlier

8 discussion about interventions. Why don\'t we just

9 take a look at that? Cecil, why don\'t you ask your

10 question while they are setting up?

11 DR. PICKETT: It was really a comment in

12 response to Dr. Orloff\'s presentation. I really

13 just wanted to compliment the FDA for being really

14 proactive in revisiting the guidelines for the

15 treatment of obesity. I strongly encourage the FDA

16 to really have the advisory committee in late 2004.

17 I think that would be very, very useful, very

18 beneficial.

19 In terms of unanswered questions that Dr.

20 Orloff discussed, particularly with head-to-head

21 comparisons of approved agents for the treatment of

22 obesity, I think that will happen. I think that

120

1 will happen in Phase IV studies that will occur,

2 and market dynamics will basically drive those

3 studies in terms of companies trying to position

4 obesity therapy out in the marketplace, as we are

5 seeing in other areas in terms of hyperlipidemia

6 for example where these comparative studies have

7 been done.

8 Combination therapy is a little more

9 difficult because of intellectual property issues

10 with approved agents but, again, if in fact

11 combination therapy provides benefit to patients,

12 then I think companies, because of commercial need,

13 will find a way to develop combination therapy for

14 the treatment of obesity. So, yes, those are

15 unanswered but I see those areas as less of an

16 issue.

17 DR. SHINE: To what extent, Cecil, do you

18 think, given that the NIH is also going to make a

19 major move on obesity, they ought to be into, for

20 example, combination trials and things of this sort

21 as opposed to the industry? What do you think the

22 balance is in terms of what the NIH ought to be

121

1 doing and what industry can do in this area?

2 DR. PICKETT: It certainly could provide a

3 benefit here, but generally the size of the trial

4 designs that would have to be done to show efficacy

5 and safety, particularly of combination therapy, I

6 think is really something the industry should

7 undertake.

8 DR. SHINE: And, in terms of the advisory

9 committee that is being constituted for later this

10 year, what do you think is the principal kind of

11 issue that it should be taking on in terms of

12 revisiting the situation?

13 DR. PICKETT: Well, this is obesity

14 therapy and drug development has had a real jaded

15 past, but I think it is important for the advisory

16 committee to take a look at the size of the trials

17 and the efficacy endpoints that would be required,

18 other than just simply weight loss, and also the

19 size of the studies to show long-term safety. I

20 think this is something that is still a bit of an

21 issue, at least in my own company, as we think

22 about development of drugs to treat obesity. So, I

122

1 think that would be extremely useful.

2 DR. SHINE: Thank you very much. Allen,

3 you wanted to show us a slide?

4 DR. ROSES: As a scientist, when I

5 mentioned \"omics\" I saw a lot of blank faces and I

6 think a picture is worth 10,000 words and I just

7 wanted to show you some the ways that are currently

8 being used.

9 \[Slide\]

10 It doesn\'t really matter what this

11 molecule is but it is a molecule that is being

12 tested for weight loss in obese people. If you

13 look at this, the people on the capsules are in red

14 over the course of the trial and the people on the

15 placebo are in blue. If you look to your far right

16 where the weight loss is between 4 and 10 percent

17 of weight during this particular interval, there is

18 a spike of people who are hyper-responders.

19 Interestingly, if you look to the far

20 left, people who took this drug during the course

21 of the trial gained less weight than people who

22 were on placebo. So, we also have that kind of

123

1 information.

2 But in this case it was fairly simple to

3 find several polymorphisms, ABO blood group. In

4 this case it is not the ABO blood group, but it is

5 a 1, 1 or 1,2 or 2,2 polymorphisms from 3 different

6 genes that have something to do with weight loss

7 that segregate or enrich these folks. So, the 2,2

8 patients are the hyper-responders; the 1,1 would be

9 those that wouldn\'t seem to have that much of a

10 response; and the 1,2 are those in the middle.

11 From the point of view of taking something

12 with a partial response, if you want to go into

13 Phase III trials, partial response requires larger

14 trials. But, in fact, if you can segment the

15 population, and I think we are going to hear about

16 that later this afternoon from Dr. Temple, but if

17 you can segment the population and withdraw from

18 your selection the non-responding population or the

19 1,1, you are more likely to get an effect with

20 fewer people, a shorter period of time and a better

21 proof of principle that the molecule has true

22 efficacy. This is \"omics.\" It is called

124

1 pharmacogenomics and it is being applied now.

2 DR. SHINE: Thank you, Allen. I didn\'t

3 know that Allen had that slide but it is relevant

4 to this notion that, given the necessity for folks

5 to be on these agents I suspect for a long time

6 given the way this chronic problem persists,

7 finding ways to stratify the population, on

8 whatever basis, would be important in terms of

9 minimizing the risks. Dan?

10 DR. CASCIANO: I am just curious, is there

11 a phenotype associated with that hyper-responder?

12 DR. ROSES: Not that we could see

13 prospectively that there was a genotype.

14 DR. SHINE: Xavier?

15 DR. PI-SUNYER: I would like to comment on

16 that further and also on something Dr. Orloff said,

17 and that has to do with weight gain with drugs. I

18 really do believe that that is another problem that

19 the FDA really needs to look at very closely.

20 These very active, very good antipsychotic drugs

21 are having an enormous impact on weight in a number

22 of people. We see people who have gained 60, 70

125

1 pounds on the psychotropic drugs. They don\'t want

2 to go off them because their mental state is so

3 much improved by these drugs. Maybe the kind of

4 research that Dr. Roses just commented on would be

5 important in that, that is to say, not the

6 responders for the efficacy of the drug but the

7 responders for the side effects of the drug which

8 are really pretty bad for some people. I think

9 certainly in the label of these drugs a lot more

10 should be said about the side effect of weight

11 gain. I think every psychiatrist today should have

12 a scale in his office and weigh his or her patients

13 every time they come. You know, if you talk to

14 psychiatrists about that, there isn\'t a scale in a

15 psychiatrist\'s office, I don\'t think anywhere.

16 DR. SHINE: Your comment is very well

17 taken and I think very important. Dr. Orloff, do

18 you want to make any response to that? No? But

19 you are, in fact, going to be looking closely at

20 this issue in terms of the identification and

21 potential labeling in terms of drugs which are

22 associated with weight gain. Any other comments on

126

1 any of the material that we have heard this morning

2 on obesity? John?

3 DR. THOMAS: Just a quick note, certainly

4 the troika of obesity is exercise, diet and drugs

5 and my concern, as we go forward, would be in the

6 drug development area and that we don\'t lead people

7 into a false expectation. I mean, finding a good

8 anti-obesity drug would be like finding the \"Holy

9 Grail.\" In fact, until that is found we want to

10 make sure that there is continued emphasis on

11 exercise and diet. Everyone would love to have

12 that magic bullet or pill so they can still be a

13 couch potato but that is not going to happen for a

14 while.

15 DR. SHINE: Let me just summarize. I

16 think we have seen very good evidence that obesity

17 is both a national and an international problem.

18 You might be interested to know that if you go to

19 Beijing today, close to 20 percent of the residents

20 in Beijing are obese. Twenty-five years ago you

21 never saw obese Chinese. But gravitating to the

22 city, losing the capacity to bicycle or work in

127

1 agriculture, the availability of fast foods, the

2 movement from a diet that was rich in rice and in

3 some places fish to one that has shown

4 extraordinary increases in pork consumption and

5 beef consumption has produced a significant number

6 of obese Chinese.

7 We, in this country, are suffering from

8 all of the effects of being able to afford to eat

9 as much as we want and to travel in vehicles

10 everywhere we want to go, and we have made some

11 very poor investments. On the one hand, as John

12 pointed out, we have invested in vending machines

13 to produce more income for schools at the same time

14 that we did away with gym and a number of other

15 physical exercise programs.

16 What we have heard I think is that the FDA

17 has a critically important role in dealing with a

18 multifactorial problem which the FDA in itself is

19 not going to solve. But given the capacity to

20 understand the data, to refine that and to provide

21 good information, the challenge, it seems to me, is

22 going to be providing that information to the right

128

1 people at the right time so that they can make the

2 right kinds of decisions. That includes not just

3 the individual consumer but includes school boards,

4 PTAs, employers, health departments and others who

5 can use that information as part of a broader

6 activity, whether it is involved in color coding

7 calory density or something else.

8 So, I think the work that I have seen and

9 the report on \"Calories Count\" is very useful. I

10 do like the way in which the focus groups responded

11 to the various ways to present the information.

12 And I think that doing further trials and creating

13 a sense that this is a long-term, continuous

14 quality improvement process will be the way in

15 which we can contribute the most to this activity.

16 I want to thank the presenters this morning, and I

17 would encourage the members of the committee, if

18 you have additional thoughts as you digest\--and

19 that is not meant to be a pun\--digest this

20 information, please communicate it because I think

21 the staff would like to get as much input and

22 perspective as they can. If you might come into

129

1 some restaurant in your travels that does an

2 exemplary approach to this, you might even let us

3 know. Thank you again.

4 We will go on to our presentation prior to

5 the public hearing. John Marzilli, who is Deputy

6 Associate Commissioner for Regulatory Affairs, is

7 going to give us an update on the Office of

8 Regulatory Affairs peer review process. John?

9 Update on Office of Regulatory Affairs

10 Peer Review Process

11 DR. MARZILLI: Thank you, Dr. Shine and

12 members of the Board.

13 \[Slide\]

14 I am John Marzilli. I am from the Office

15 of Regulatory Affairs, FDA\'s field organization,

16 and I am here this morning to give you an update of

17 our peer review of our pesticide and industrial

18 chemicals program.

19 \[Slide\]

20 With me today is Dr. John Specchio. Dr.

21 Specchio is ORA\'s senior science advisor and

22 professor of food science at Montclair State

130

1 University in Montclair, New Jersey.

2 \[Slide\]

3 Briefly, the objectives of our peer review

4 of the pesticides and industrial chemical program

5 in the Office of Regulatory Affairs are to assess

6 the quality of science across our organization,

7 from program planning with the Center for Food

8 Safety, our inspectional program, investigations,

9 laboratory analysis, regulatory actions taken by

10 the agency and across the entire system our quality

11 management system. Since we are a science-based

12 regulatory agency, the quality management system is

13 an underpinning for all of the activities that we

14 undertake.

15 We are also taking the opportunity to look

16 at the adequacy of resources for this program in

17 particular, the skills and expertise of our staff

18 across the country, the technologies employed in

19 terms of laboratories, equipment information

20 systems utilized, as well as our organizational

21 infrastructure, with a keen view toward the mission

22 relevance of this program for the Office of

131

1 Regulatory Affairs in particular and the Food and

2 Drug Administration in its mission.

3 \[Slide\]

4 I would like you to focus your attention

5 on the last sentence here in FDA\'s mission

6 statement which we feel is an important aspect for

7 us in looking at this program. It is helping the

8 public to get the accurate science-based

9 information that they need to use medicines and

10 foods to improve their health. One of the

11 underpinnings of this study is to make sure that

12 our information is accurate, cutting-edge science

13 and timely that we get to our constituents, to the

14 regulated industry and to the public as well.

15 \[Slide\]

16 The goal of the ORA peer review of the

17 pesticides program in particular has been to

18 establish a roadmap for future improvement of this

19 program and coordination of the pesticide program

20 across the ORA field organization. Also, we want

21 to use this as a model for the future review of

22 additional programs, scientific programs within the

132

1 Office of Regulatory Affairs.

2 \[Slide\]

3 As I mentioned, our team is a

4 cross-section of the Office of Regulatory Affairs.

5 As the Deputy Associate Commissioner for Regulatory

6 Affairs, I serve as the executive sponsor for this

7 study and our future studies. Our senior advisor

8 to the team is Susan Setterberg, our regional

9 director from the central region. Co-chairing

10 along with John Specchio, our science advisor, is

11 Pat Schafer, Director of Compliance from New

12 Orleans. On the team we also have Tom Gardine,

13 District Director from Philadelphia, Sandra

14 Whetstone, from our headquarters Office of

15 Enforcement, Michael Ellison, a national food

16 expert with our Division of Field Investigations.

17 We also have a representative of the import program

18 at FDA from the New England District, Frank

19 Mazzoni, and for administrative support, the New

20 Orleans District has been gracious enough to have

21 Barbara George working with us, and we thank the

22 District for her assistance.

133

1 \[Slide\]

2 Our team members from the lab side, as I

3 said and I will introduce him shortly, Dr.

4 Specchio, our senior science advisor for the

5 Division of Field Science is co-chair of the peer

6 review team. From our Division of Field Science

7 here, in Rockville, we have Tom Savage, the Deputy

8 Director. We have two senior science advisors,

9 Larry D\'Hoostelaere and Charlie Parfitt

10 participating on the team, and representing our

11 Pacific Regional Office, is Tom Sidebottom,

12 assistant to the regional director, and formerly

13 from our Southwest Regional Office, who has since

14 retired, Meredith Grahn participated in some of the

15 work that we began a year ago in this endeavor. I

16 would like to acknowledge the work done by our

17 senior science advisor for the Office of Regulatory

18 Affairs who retired at the end of the calendar

19 year, Richard Baldwin, who was an active member of

20 this team and the original chair for this endeavor

21 before it was handed over to John Specchio and

22 myself at the beginning of the calendar year.

134

1 \[Slide\]

2 I would just like to share with you the

3 breadth of the Office of Regulatory Affairs. We

4 are 190 officers are located across the country.

5 We are present in 49 states, the Commonwealth of

6 Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands.

7 The only state where the FDA doesn\'t happen to have

8 an office is the State of Wyoming, to which we can

9 easily commute from our other states. But we are

10 present in 190 cities with 4,000 employees

11 nationwide.

12 \[Slide\]

13 The laboratory support for the work that

14 we do in the Office of Regulatory Affairs is

15 coordinated across 13 field laboratories for the

16 Office of Regulatory Affairs. We have five

17 multi-purpose laboratories that are responsible for

18 the analysis of all FDA-regulated products, and

19 those laboratories are located in New York,

20 Atlanta, Jefferson, Arkansas, Los Angeles and

21 Seattle. These laboratories are the underpinning

22 of our pesticide program as are our pesticide

135

1 servicing laboratories. With have eight specialty

2 laboratories for which Kansas City, which is the

3 sixth laboratory that we included in the lab study

4 portion of the peer review, is our total diet

5 laboratory for the FDA, and that is co-located with

6 our Kansas City district office.

7 Now I would like to turn the podium over

8 to Dr. Specchio, our science advisor, to give you

9 an overview of the program.

10 DR. SPECCHIO: Thank you, John, and thank

11 you to the FDA Science Board for inviting me.

12 \[Slide\]

13 One thing I have heard a lot today was a

14 lively discussion of obesity and, no matter which

15 way the FDA goes, more food, less food, high fat

16 food, low fat food, we are going to make sure that

17 it is free of pesticides and industrial chemicals.

18 So, hopefully, we will be on our path to doing

19 that.

20 Just a few other comments, as we all know,

21 ORA\'s program responsibilities are extremely

22 diverse and very inter-disciplinary. In order to

136

1 approach the peer review process systematically,

2 our assessment really focused on the pesticide and

3 industrial chemicals program area.

4 \[Slide\]

5 The components of the peer review process

6 were designed and based upon design and

7 implementation of a data review process. I will

8 talk about that briefly in a short while. We also

9 looked at a comprehensive work product review

10 pesticide and industrial chemical data collected

11 for one entire fiscal year. We also had structured

12 discussions with managers and technical experts.

13 We actually developed a database research

14 model and a list of questions of in-depth and

15 focused interviews based on our developed research

16 model. We conducted a thorough examination of

17 major programs in food areas in the pesticide and

18 industrial chemicals total diet study and dioxant

19 programs.

20 \[Slide\]

21 To give you an overview of the complexity

22 of the research model that was developed by our

137

1 committee, there were eight district offices

2 visited by our site review teams. There were six

3 ORA laboratories visited. John mentioned the

4 location of most of those, and there were

5 additional 12 district offices included in the

6 study that were not in the site visits. We wanted

7 to make sure that we included all the districts in

8 the ORA system. The district offices and labs

9 visited were picked because of their past and

10 present involvement with the ORA pesticide and

11 industrial chemical program.

12 \[Slide\]

13 Our on-site visits included review of

14 many, many different things that are important to

15 the program. For instance, local SOPs for domestic

16 and imported work. We looked at sample collection

17 reports. We looked very, very in-depth at the lab

18 worksheets. We looked at the establishment

19 inspection reports; the compliance actions; the

20 data systems, including FACTS and OASIS, and for

21 those members who are not familiar with those

22 acronyms, the acronym of FACTS, which I had to

138

1 learn myself, was Field Accomplishment Compliance

2 Tracking System which captures all field

3 investigations, sample analytical results and

4 compliance records of FDA regulatory work. OASIS

5 stands for the Operational and Administrative

6 System for Import Support. All import entries of

7 FDA-regulated products, nearly eight million this

8 year, are tracked through this system. We looked

9 at all the current guidance for the pesticide and

10 industrial chemical program. We looked at

11 historical documents and earlier studies, and we

12 interviewed managers and technical experts and

13 calculated their responses.

14 \[Slide\]

15 The database research model which was

16 developed by the team was utilized to validate the

17 on-site reviews. The team reviewed over 357 work

18 products, as I outlined before. We focused on all

19 violative work products and reviewed a portion of

20 non-violative as well. We interviewed over 150

21 individuals, both in terms of management and lab

22 and science experts. We had additional comments

139

1 received from all interested individuals. After

2 consolidation, the committee received nearly 100

3 pages of comments which were reviewed by the

4 committee as well.

5 The comments that we received had a

6 working knowledge of the pesticide and industrial

7 chemicals program and, again, the committee had

8 over 500 comments to review, to consider

9 established trends and to develop ideas for

10 improvement of the program.

11 \[Slide\]

12 As we progressed with the analysis of the

13 data five key areas emerged and we are still

14 working on this, and hopefully our recommendations

15 will center around these five key areas. One is

16 program management. We are already seeing several

17 types of major recommendations that may be on the

18 horizon. In terms of program management, some

19 possibilities would be redesign of the work

20 distribution for the domestic and imported programs

21 around our laboratory system.

22 We spent a lot of time on laboratory

140

1 science issues. Some questions we are looking at

2 are, are we using the right methods? Are the

3 methods current? Is our instrumentation adequate

4 for the job at hand? How does FDA stand versus

5 other organizations in both our compliance and also

6 our lab science?

7 In terms of the productivity and

8 timeliness, are we checking the right foods? Are

9 we looking at imports differently than we are

10 looking at domestic foods? Are we getting the

11 results back in a timely fashion so that we can

12 adequately protect the consumer? Again, are we

13 looking at the type of foods versus the consumption

14 of the population, the proportion of foods that are

15 out there versus consumption patterns? Are we

16 targeting the right types of foods?

17 Resources\--we are looking at lab

18 capabilities. We are looking at the lab

19 assignments and the personnel. Again, we are

20 looking at do we have the right equipment? Do we

21 need to improve our training? Do we need to look

22 at our budgets for this particular program too or

141

1 is the budget adequate? Of course, compliance and

2 regulatory policies are going to play a major role

3 in looking at recommendations, whether or not we

4 need to address this and are the compliance and

5 regulatory policies effectively meeting the

6 original task our original task that it was

7 intended to do?

8 \[Slide\]

9 Finally, what are our next steps? Well,

10 we are in the process right now of finalizing the

11 review. The committee met several seeks ago to

12 start writing the preliminary report and analyzing

13 most of the data. We are going to meet again in a

14 few weeks to continue this process. In addition to

15 that, we will design a timeline for execution of

16 proposed improvements. As John mentioned, the

17 purpose of this is to propose improvements to the

18 pesticide and industrial chemical program. We will

19 look at a timeline and we will, hopefully, make

20 recommendations to the people who will move forward

21 with our recommendations. Our final report will be

22 finished in the summer of 2004 and we intend to

142

1 make a full presentation to all of you, the Science

2 Board at the fall, 2004 meeting.

3 \[Slide\]

4 I am very, very pleased to tell you that

5 the committee was a very, very good committee. We

6 all worked very well together. I think there was

7 great cooperation and I think we are on the right

8 track for looking at our proposed objective, which

9 was to look at the state of science in ORA of the

10 pesticide and chemical contaminants program. With

11 that, I will close and I thank you for your time.

12 DR. SHINE: Thank you. Questions?

13 Observations? Yes, Jim?

14 DR. RIVIERE: One observation, this

15 committee seems to have been made up primarily of

16 FDA people. Why weren\'t there more external

17 people, especially for an assessment of the state

18 of the science? I am just curious because most

19 other center reviews I have seen involve outside

20 people.

21 DR. ALDERSON: Let me address this. This

22 part of this review, what they are reporting on, is

143

1 the first step of the process. This is their

2 internal assessment. What they are doing, what

3 will be presented to the Board is what is used to

4 go to the next steps for the external, and Dr.

5 Shine will appoint an outside committee this fall

6 and do the external review, just like we have done

7 with the other three Centers.

8 DR. SHINE: Other observations? John?

9 DR. THOMAS: I am just curious as to

10 whether you have added more chemicals or more

11 pesticides to your list of monitoring, and have you

12 changed any of the levels of residues?

13 DR. MARZILLI: Only God can add to the

14 list of residues\--God and the EPA\--

15 \[Laughter\]

16 I think one thing that we have done, not

17 in terms of adding to the list of industrial

18 chemicals or pesticides that we are reviewing, is

19 we have brought more improved communications across

20 the field organization here, and I think life in

21 general has brought new challenges to our program

22 in terms of looking at residues and contaminants

144

1 that we weren\'t looking at a few years ago, such as

2 chloramphenicol residues and the dioxant work that

3 has been ramped up as well. You have seen recent

4 coverage of that in the news. Our organization has

5 ramped up to address these new challenges and

6 brought forward the equipment and the personnel and

7 gotten them trained, working in collaboration with

8 the Center for Food Safety and the Center for

9 Veterinary Medicine to get these programs added to

10 the existing programs in the field laboratories.

11 So, every day new challenges do face us.

12 DR. THOMAS: I was just going to add has

13 there been a shift insofar as the analysis of, say,

14 border versus non-border?

15 DR. MARZILLI: Actually, border is a funny

16 term to discuss when you are talking about the

17 import program because, for instance, for us right

18 now the major border location could be a city like

19 Louisville, Kentucky\--and I just use that as an

20 example\--where you would have plane loads of

21 produce from anywhere in the world where a plane

22 would touch down in Miami or Newark, New Jersey,

145

1 and the final destination would be Louisville or

2 any other city in the middle of the country, and

3 that becomes a border location for us and we have

4 to deploy investigators to get out there, collect

5 samples, have the samples shipped to the

6 laboratory, and we have a commitment to get timely

7 results out so that, especially in the case of

8 fresh produce, that product can be distributed into

9 the marketplace.

10 So, we have incredible new challenges as

11 an agency. Years ago our border locations were our

12 major port cities along the east and west coast and

13 the border between our partners here in the North

14 American continent. But those borders have moved

15 all over the United States now. It has been a

16 tremendous challenge for us, but that has been the

17 underpinning of our program probably for the past

18 ten years to get timely results to the customers

19 that are waiting to get the produce to market.

20 DR. SHINE: Clearly, food safety has been

21 one of the issues in dealing with terrorism. The

22 agency has ramped up its activities in this regard.

146

1 Is your analysis taking into consideration the

2 potential for materials to be introduced into the

3 food supply?

4 DR. MARZILLI: Yes, sir, absolutely. As a

5 matter of fact, from the foundation of our

6 pesticides and industrial chemicals program we have

7 ramped up across eight of our field laboratories,

8 in the chemistry area, a food emergency response

9 network. The focus for those efforts in terms of

10 methods and instrumentation has been collaborative

11 efforts with other government agencies, and we have

12 ramped from a food safety to a food security

13 program in our chemistry labs so that we can

14 provide this.

15 At some point in the near future I would

16 like to share with the Science Board the investment

17 that we are bringing on-line now with our mobile

18 laboratories that can be deployed anywhere in the

19 country. We have two that we have designed now,

20 that have been designed under contract with the

21 Department of Defense and will have a biological

22 platform for handling bio agents, and the other

147

1 will have a chem platform for handling chem agents,

2 and they can be deployed anywhere in the country.

3 So, FDA has a hundred years of experience

4 that we are using as a foundation for this work

5 but, as you know, the challenges grow every day.

6 DR. SHINE: Susan, did you want to make a

7 comment?

8 DR. HARLANDER: Is this review process for

9 all of the Centers? Is this something we will look

10 forward to at each meeting?

11 DR. ALDERSON: It is an ongoing process

12 across the Centers and CBER, CDRH and CFSAN have

13 already undergone their reviews. So, ORA was next

14 in line and that will be followed CDER.

15 DR. SHINE: Any other comments or

16 questions? Observations? We look forward to a

17 report in the fall and also for working out next

18 steps in terms of the external portion of this

19 review. Thank you very much.

20 Open Public Hearing

21 We will now move to an open public

22 hearing. I have been instructed to read the

148

1 following statement for the record: Both the Food

2 and Drug Administration and the public believe in a

3 transparent process for information gathering and

4 decision-making. To ensure such transparency at

5 the open public hearing session of the advisory

6 committee meeting, FDA believes that it is

7 important to understand the context of an

8 individual\'s presentation. For this reason, FDA

9 encourages you, the open public hearing speaker, at

10 the beginning of your written or oral statement to

11 advise the committee of any financial relationship

12 that you may have with any company or any group

13 that is likely to be impacted by the topic of this

14 meeting. For example, the financial information

15 may include a company\'s or a group\'s payment of

16 your travel, lodging or other expenses in

17 connection with your attendance at the meeting.

18 Likewise, FDA encourages you at the beginning of

19 your statement to advise the committee if you do

20 not have any such financial relationships. If you

21 choose not to address this issue of financial

22 relationships at the beginning of your statement,

149

1 it will not preclude you from speaking.

2 We have three individuals who will be

3 making particulars. We also have received a

4 written document from Robert Rheinhart on behalf of

5 the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the San

6 Francisco AIDS Foundation, speaking to the Critical

7 Path issue that we will be discussing this

8 afternoon. That statement will be posted on the

9 web site and will be available for public scrutiny.

10 We have two statements that we know about with

11 regard to the obesity working group report and one

12 with regard to the Critical Path.

13 In regard to the obesity working group

14 report, we will ask Richard Atkinson, M.D.,

15 President of the American Obesity Association and

16 Past President of the North American Association

17 for the Study of Obesity and the American Society

18 for Clinical Nutrition, to make a statement. We

19 want to limit the statements to five minutes. The

20 committee may have questions and we would

21 appreciate it if the speakers would use the

22 microphone so that we can get their comments on

150

1 record. Is Dr. Atkinson here? No? Well, we have

2 a letter from Dr. Atkinson indicating that he was

3 going to be here. If there is no objection, I

4 think that letter could be placed in the record as

5 well.

6 The next speaker was Arthur Frank, M.D.,

7 from the George Washington University Weight

8 Management program. Dr. Frank, why don\'t you

9 proceed?

10 DR. FRANK: My name is Arthur Frank. I am

11 a physician and the Medical Director of the George

12 Washington University Weight Management Program in

13 Washington, D.C.

14 I would like to offer some additional

15 perspective or clinical perspective because I work

16 with patients who are trying to manage the disease

17 of obesity. It is a very challenging world of

18 individual patients who are struggling with this

19 disease. I don\'t want to sound skeptical; I don\'t

20 want to sound petulant, but perhaps I can offer a

21 perspective from the viewpoint of the individual

22 physician who is dealing with the individual

151

1 patient, two people sitting in a room, talking

2 about obesity. I want to make some observations; I

3 want to raise some questions. I don\'t think I have

4 very many answers and I don\'t think any of us have

5 very many answers.

6 What is noteworthy about the disease of

7 obesity is obvious to us all, that it is a very

8 difficult disease; it is very difficult to control.

9 Our efforts, for the most part, have been very

10 unsuccessful but I would also like to emphasize the

11 enormous amount of effort that is devoted to this

12 task by patients. These are individual patients;

13 these are good people. They work very hard to

14 manage this disease, and they want desperately to

15 succeed; they care very much. They know much of

16 what they need to do. They know they have to eat

17 less and they know they have to cut down their

18 calories. They are not uninformed. They may be

19 inconsistently informed; they may be informed with

20 bad information but they are not uninformed. They

21 are not careless; they are not indifferent; and

22 they are not defiant people.

152

1 The therapeutic mandate seems very simple,

2 eat less and exercise more. This simple and really

3 very valid instruction has been, for the most part,

4 a monumental failure\--eat less and exercise more.

5 Patients do know they need to do this. This

6 information they already have. They understand it,

7 but it seems extraordinarily difficult for them to

8 implement this simple set of rules, particularly as

9 a lifelong effort. I think it is fair to ask why

10 is it so difficult to do what seems so simple\--all

11 you have to do is just eat less. Perhaps it is

12 because it assumes that eating is merely a matter

13 of choice when much of what we know about eating

14 suggests that the control of eating behavior is

15 much more involved than just willful behavior.

16 Much of eating is a highly regulated phenomenon

17 with an elaborate set of complex neurochemical and

18 peripheral signaling systems which tenaciously

19 control a survival-dependent biological function.

20 I have to emphasize this is a survival-dependent

21 biological function and it is very hard to control,

22 and the idea that someone is going willfully to

153

1 override and superimpose on that mechanism may, in

2 fact, be a relatively naive kind of assumption.

3 When you talk to patients it does not take

4 long to appreciate the intensity and the sincerity

5 of their effort, but it soon appears that telling

6 an obese patient to eat less is like telling a

7 depressed person to just pull yourself together, or

8 telling an asthmatic just breathe easy. If I could

9 pull myself together I wouldn\'t be depressed. If I

10 could breathe easy I wouldn\'t have asthma. And,

11 the obese patient says if I could eat less I

12 wouldn\'t be obese.

13 It appears to be as difficult to control

14 eating in a sustained way, or may be as difficult

15 to control eating in a sustained way as it is to

16 control sleeping or breathing. I have had the

17 draft of the obesity working group report, and I

18 looked at the report and many of the

19 recommendations of the working group deal with

20 efforts to change behavior, and I am very

21 respectful of that. Yes, we must change behavior.

22 We must do this in a sophisticated way. We must

154

1 simplify that task as much as possible, and we must

2 understand how to do that as effectively as

3 possible. But from the perspective of a physician

4 who is trying to help the patients, these

5 recommendations create a sense of merely shifting

6 the deck chairs on the deck of the Titanic,

7 particularly with severely overweight patients.

8 Severely overweight patients, they do know they

9 need to eat less.

10 Do we want to spend our resources in a

11 fight over which micronutrients to consume or how

12 to reword the label, or might we be better devoting

13 our resources in trying to understand how we can

14 modify neuropeptide Y? Some of the recommendations

15 tend to reinforce the sense of blaming the victim.

16 If you could simply control yourself you would be

17 better, and we will try to help you control

18 yourself but you must control yourself, and you and

19 I both know that the problem is more complicated,

20 that eating is a regulated phenomenon. Yes, it is

21 important that we understand behavior; it is

22 important that we teach our children: it is

155

1 important that we know how to count calories; it is

2 necessary that we change labels and we change

3 diets. But these will not have any effect on

4 changing the basic dysfunctional regulatory system,

5 which is probably a neurochemical regulatory

6 system.

7 Perhaps obesity is mostly a neurochemical

8 disease and, like diabetes of hyperlipemia, is not

9 primarily a nutritional disease. Even if we could

10 change eating behavior, we would still have to

11 change neurochemistry. My suggestion is not that

12 we avoid or neglect changing behavior but that

13 somewhere greater emphasis be placed on the fifth

14 item in the set of recommendations, what is labeled

15 therapeutics, and what I and my patients need is a

16 better understanding of the regulatory system and

17 appreciation of the complexity and the redundancy

18 of the regulatory system, a better understanding of

19 whether it is possible that changes in behavior can

20 affect the regulatory system, perhaps more

21 pharmacotherapy, more sophisticated ways of

22 modifying the regulatory system.

156

1 Perhaps obesity is like diabetes. Its

2 management does depend upon controlling diet and

3 exercise but its best control derives from

4 understanding and manipulating the hormonal

5 regulation of the biochemistry of blood sugar. We

6 will not solve the problem merely by telling people

7 that they must change their behavior when they may

8 be at the limit of what they can willfully change.

9 There is just so much that they can willfully

10 change, particularly in a sustainable way. We

11 might do better if we can understand the regulatory

12 system a little more effectively and if we can

13 develop ways of affecting that system, perhaps

14 through pharmacotherapy, and it might make more

15 successful the mandate that you all have to do is

16 to eat less and exercise more.

17 DR. SHINE: Thank you, sir. Anyone want

18 to comment with regard to this statement?

19 DR. CRAWFORD: Just an aside, I thought

20 when he was talking about the basically

21 dysfunctional regulatory system he was talking

22 about something other than what he was, and I am

157

1 relieved to know it wasn\'t the FDA!

2 DR. SHINE: I guess my response is that by

3 no means do I disagree with the notion that there

4 are a group of individuals who have enormous

5 clinical problems and clearly the agency has

6 identified the notion of therapeutics as an

7 important goal, and neurochemistry is an essential

8 portion of that, and that problem is not going to

9 be solved solely by the FDA. That is going to

10 require a concerted effort by both basic and

11 applied scientists to deal with it.

12 I think the question that we have as an

13 agency concerned with the health of our public is

14 what are the most cost-effective ways in order to

15 create a healthier society and there, sir, I would

16 argue that creating the proper environment, just as

17 we have done to reduce smoking of about half of

18 adults when I was growing up to about a quarter of

19 adults right now so that we don\'t end up with lung

20 cancer, is at least as important as the efforts to

21 develop neuropharmacologic agents. The emphasis I

22 think on information, behavior and environment is

158

1 predicated on the concept that we would like to see

2 whether we can\'t minimize the number of patients

3 that come to you in your practice, but we know

4 damned well you are going to still have plenty of

5 patients in the foreseeable future.

6 We will move next to a statement by

7 Elizabeth Jacobson. Elizabeth Jacobson, Ph.D. is

8 Executive Vice President for Technology and

9 Regulatory Affairs at AdvaMed in Washington, and

10 she is going to make certain comments on the

11 Critical Path. We have not discussed that but the

12 committee has read the material and, hopefully, is

13 knowledgeable about this so we look forward to your

14 comments.

15 DR. JACOBSON: Good morning. I am hear

16 representing the Advanced Medical Technology

17 Association, or AdvaMed. AdvaMed is the world\'s

18 largest association of manufacturers of medical

19 devices, diagnostic products and medical

20 information systems. We have more than 1,100

21 members who manufacture nearly 90 percent of the

22 devices and diagnostics that are purchased annually

159

1 in the United States, and about 50 percent of the

2 products that are purchased annually around the

3 world.

4 Although we are the largest device trade

5 association, our members range from the largest to

6 the smallest companies. Nearly 70 percent of our

7 members are small businesses, with fewer than 30

8 million dollars annually in sales.

9 We would like to thank you for the

10 opportunity to comment on FDA\'s white paper on the

11 Critical Path. Our bottom line is that we support

12 FDA\'s efforts to identify and address issues that

13 prevent innovative products from reaching patients

14 and we have four general points that we would like

15 to make about the paper that you are all going to

16 be talking about this afternoon.

17 First, the paper\'s underlying assumption

18 about device innovation is not really supported by

19 the data on device submissions. The paper states

20 in several places that its findings of stagnation

21 apply to drugs, biological products and medical

22 devices. But the illustration that there is

160

1 stagnation in the industry is really based on

2 metrics for devices and biologics over the past ten

3 years and, in fact, there is a graph that shows

4 that there has been a steady ten-year decline in

5 submissions for these products. But FDA\'s own

6 statistics don\'t demonstrate a similar decline in

7 the number of medical device submissions over the

8 same time period and, in fact, there has been a

9 statistically significant increase in both PMA and

10 IDE submissions over the past ten years, although

11 for devices the numbers do bounce around more than

12 they do for drugs and biologics.

13 We think this is important because in any

14 effort to identify opportunities to move products

15 along in their development it is really critical to

16 understand the key differences between the

17 industries. These differences may be important in

18 identifying solution strategies. Moreover, it may

19 be that some device-specific regulatory approaches

20 could be useful in addressing concerns about the

21 developmental process for pharmaceuticals, and the

22 agency and the pharmaceutical industry may, in

161

1 fact, want to look at that.

2 Most important to the device industry are

3 the areas where improvements could further

4 facilitate the movement, obviously, of innovative

5 devices to the patient\'s bedside, and we are

6 interested in identifying and addressing these

7 areas with the agency and other players, and we are

8 looking forward to the discussion this afternoon,

9 especially to hear more about the proposed Critical

10 Path opportunities list.

11 Our second point is that the unique

12 characteristics of device innovation are really key

13 to understanding Critical Path opportunities for

14 devices, and I would like to go into those a little

15 bit. Device development has been characterized as

16 a continuous iterative process. It is

17 characterized by constant product changes made in

18 response to user needs and preferences, and it

19 really distinguishes device innovation from

20 pharmaceutical development.

21 There is also a learning curve associated

22 with practitioner use of device technologies that

162

1 may be longer than that with drugs. Importantly,

2 innovations in devices are not restricted to the

3 premarket phase of their development. Instead,

4 actual use of devices by practitioners in the

5 clinical setting typically spurs additional

6 refinements and improvements. So, the clinical use

7 of new devices stimulates feedback from medical

8 practitioners, device redesign use, more feedback

9 and, in fact, also leads to ides for breakthrough

10 technologies as well.

11 In addition, medical device refinements

12 often result from advances in other industries, in

13 material sciences and bioengineering, molecular

14 biology and information system, just to mention

15 some. A lot of technologies are adaptations from

16 other fields and many were developed through the

17 interdisciplinary work of clinicians, physicists,

18 biologists, engineers, computer scientists and

19 others. So, this interdisciplinary character also

20 contributes to the evolutionary nature of device

21 development and it lends a degree of

22 unpredictability to the process.

163

1 Our third point is that the principles of

2 device regulation to date have been based on these

3 unique characteristics of devices and device

4 innovation. Congress recognized the broad

5 diversity of devices and realized that the

6 one-size-fits-all of drug regulation probably

7 wouldn\'t work for devices. Accordingly, in 1976,

8 Congress based the device regulatory scheme on the

9 degree of risk, with the lowest risk devices

10 subject to only basic requirements and the highest

11 risk devices subject to more extensive premarket

12 review.

13 More recently, in \'97, the Food and Drug

14 Modernization Act codified certain medical device

15 policies that enabled more streamlined review of

16 devices, things like exemption for the many of the

17 lowest products, early collaboration meetings,

18 collaborative review processes and other

19 provisions.

20 Perhaps most relevant to a discussion of

21 Critical Path FDMA also contained a least

22 burdensome provision that required FDA to identify

164

1 and utilize the most expedient means to market for

2 novel technologies that would still assure device

3 safety and effectiveness and FDA has found a lot of

4 opportunities to apply least burdensome methods to

5 device review, and I am sure you will hear some of

6 them from the device speakers this afternoon,

7 including the use of Bayesian statistics to reduce

8 the number of subjects required in clinical

9 studies; reliance on valid non-U.S. data in lieu of

10 clinical data from U.S. populations; use of

11 previously submitted information; data from

12 published literature; and the use of objective

13 performance criteria.

14 Among the reasons for this congressional

15 focus on risk-based regulation was recognition that

16 the device industry differs in significant ways

17 from that of the pharmaceutical industry. The vast

18 majority of device companies is small. The life

19 cycle of the average device is about 18 months,

20 after which the device is replaced by newer

21 technology. Devices typically do not benefit from

22 extended patent protection, and medical devices

165

1 encompass a huge range of products, from bandages

2 and wheelchairs to in vitro diagnostic products, to

3 implanted defibrillators and artificial joints and

4 drug-coated stents.

5 For these reasons, there was a need for a

6 regulatory system that could be flexible as well as

7 efficient, and since \'76 FDA has looked for ways to

8 improve its pre- and postmarket handling of medical

9 devices. Most recently, it converted its GMP

10 regulation, good manufacturing practices, to a

11 quality system approach that was closely harmonized

12 to the internationally accepted ISO quality systems

13 standard, and it required the industry to apply

14 risk management principles to medical device

15 design.

16 Our final point is that there is always

17 room for improvement in any endeavor, including the

18 regulation of medical devices. FDA\'s white paper

19 proposes that FDA, industry and academia work

20 together to ensure that products move along the

21 Critical Path of development and it proposes that

22 the development of a Critical Path opportunities

166

1 list.

2 We certainly support the desired endpoint

3 here and we see the potential for improvement in

4 processes issues and in science issues. For

5 example, we think the science used in device review

6 could benefit from a critical look at what are the

7 scientific expectations for new and novel

8 technologies, and how can we feed those into an

9 appropriate clinical trial design. So, we have had

10 some early thoughts on potential candidates for

11 this critical opportunities list but before

12 proceeding any further to refine our list we really

13 want to hear some more specifics in today\'s

14 discussion about how is the agency thinking about

15 this and how does it intend to proceed with this

16 effort. So, we are very much looking forward to

17 this afternoon. Thank you very much.

18 DR. SHINE: Thank you very much for your

19 comments. I know, Janet, you are going to be

20 talking about the Critical Path this afternoon. Do

21 you want to make any observations about this

22 question whether devices are following the same

167

1 track as biologics and drugs?

2 DR. WOODCOCK: I put a slide in the

3 presentation on the PMA submissions so that will be

4 available and we can discuss that. I think we did

5 acknowledge in the report, although because we had

6 so many things to talk about it was brief, that

7 devices, as Liz just said, have a more iterative

8 development process and you are going back and

9 forth from the clinic with many improvements and

10 engineering technology allows that to happen versus

11 drug development technology.

12 So, it is different and we believe that we

13 need to develop somewhat different approaches, and

14 I think we all agree with that.

15 DR. SHINE: Thank you. Any other public

16 testimony? I have a special admiration for the

17 device industry. As a young cardiologist I took

18 care of a patient who had aortic insufficiency and

19 had a bird-cage valve put in, a so-called Hoofnagel

20 valve. Probably no one in the room here has ever

21 seen one. It was a valve that was placed in the

22 aorta, just behind the trachea, and it made a

168

1 clicking sound every time it opened and closed. If

2 the patient opened his or her mouth\--they were

3 mostly males\--you could hear it clicking across the

4 room. As long as the patient was in sinus rhythm,

5 a regular rhythm, the patients could tolerate it.

6 This young man developed atrial fibrillation and

7 the randomly irregular sound drove him to suicide.

8 He was not the only case. But the incremental

9 improvement in heart valves and technique which

10 eventually allowed one to put in heart valves which

11 are essentially completely silent so even the

12 patient can\'t hear them is one of the examples of

13 devices which came a long way. So, I have a

14 special respect for incremental changes in devices,

15 and we will talk more about that this afternoon.

16 Are there any other items? Janet, could

17 we start at one o\'clock? Would that work for you?

18 We do have some speakers who aren\'t here yet and I

19 am afraid if we start much before that they may not

20 be here. But we will reconvene at 1:00. Do any

21 members of the committee have any other comments

22 they want to make before we adjourn for lunch? If

169

1 not, why don\'t we recess and we will reconvene at

2 one o\'clock?

3 \[Whereupon, at 11:30 a.m., the proceedings

4 were recessed for lunch, to reconvene at 1:00 p.m.\]

170

1 A F T E R N O O N P R O C E E D I N G S

2 DR. SHINE: In open session one of our

3 presenters lost so much weight that he became

4 invisible! He has now reappeared in proper form

5 and we want to give him an opportunity to make a

6 statement. So, if we can reconvene, at 12:55 we

7 will go ahead and we will be in open session. I

8 have given Dr. Atkinson a copy of the instructions

9 which I read so that for the record he has heard

10 that. Richard Atkinson is the Director of the

11 Obesity Institute at MedStar Research Institute in

12 Washington, and he is going to take about five

13 minutes to make a presentation as part of our

14 discussion on obesity.

15 DR. ATKINSON: Thank you very much, Dr.

16 Shine. Sorry, I had another appointment and was

17 confused about the time I was supposed to be here.

18 First the financial disclosure, I have

19 consulted at least for pretty much every company

20 that makes an obesity drug and a whole bunch of

21 them that don\'t and would like to, so I am

22 completely conflicted and take everything I say

171

1 with a grain of salt. So, that is my conflict of

2 interest\--

3 DR. SHINE: No, no, not with a grain of

4 salt\--

5 \[Laughter\]

6 DR. ATKINSON: I am currently the

7 President of the American Obesity Association, and

8 Past President of the North American Association

9 for the Study of Obesity and the American Society

10 of Clinical Nutrition, but I am not really here

11 today to represent them; I am here as a physician

12 who has treated obese people for more than 30

13 years. I started my first weight reduction program

14 in 1973.

15 I am a little bit concerned about the

16 direction that I see the federal government, or at

17 least the emphasis that I see the federal

18 government is taking, and I want to just point out

19 some things, and I will try to be brief because I

20 understand Dr. Frank also said the same thing this

21 morning. But just to talk about obesity as a

22 chronic disease, multiple causes and obviously all

172

1 of them have excess adipose tissue, but the

2 critical point I think is that the biochemistry of

3 the body of obese people is different from that of

4 lean people. If an obese person loses weight down

5 to that of a lean person their biochemistry is

6 still not that of a lean person. They are poised

7 to regain weight and they have terrible hunger. If

8 you have not tried going on about a third of your

9 calories for about two weeks and see if you can do

10 that for the rest of your life, and that is,

11 indeed, what obese people do, they have those

12 protective mechanisms.

13 That is why I think the standard treatment

14 of diet, exercise and behavior modification has not

15 worked. We have decades of research to show that

16 it really does not work well. That is not to say

17 that all the things that are coming out are not

18 really important. We do need to look at what are

19 kids are eating and get at least milk into the

20 vending machines. We need to increase the

21 activity, and so forth. So, all those things are

22 very important but terribly important for skinny

173

1 people too; it is not just for fat people and it is

2 not enough.

3 I will point out that the treatment of

4 choice for new onset type 2 diabetes and new onset

5 of essential hypertension in the absence of any

6 obvious renal disease is diet and exercise and both

7 of those work very well. In 80 percent-plus people

8 the blood pressure comes down; their blood sugar

9 comes down. Why aren\'t the first words out of the

10 mouth of the physician, okay, I am going to put you

11 on a diet for a year and then we will see if we can

12 use drugs?

13 So, I realize that the drugs that we have

14 for obesity now are not terribly effective but we

15 have not been very creative in using those drugs in

16 different ways, and we have also not, I think,

17 spent the kind of money that needs to be spent from

18 the period from 1973 to 1994 so there were no

19 obesity drugs released on the market.

20 So, I come here to point that out. I

21 think it is great to do these behavior things.

22 These preventive measures are very important, but I

174

1 would hate to see such huge amounts of money go to

2 those and not to developing drugs to treat the

3 disease of obesity. I think I will stop there.

4 Thank you very much.

5 DR. SHINE: Thank you very much for your

6 comments. Does anyone want to make any comment

7 with regard to the presentation? I think, as with

8 Dr. Frank, none of us denies the critical

9 importance of dealing with those people who are

10 particularly morbidly obese and drug development

11 and we hope that is going to happen as a

12 consequence of concerted efforts, not only by FDA

13 in terms of what its role is, but the NIH which has

14 increasingly identified obesity as a public health

15 target. I think we agree that a balanced approach

16 to this is likely to be required. Thank you, Dr.

17 Atkinson.

18 Let\'s move back to our agenda. We are

19 going to be taken down the Critical Path by our

20 next speaker. Janet Woodcock I think is known to

21 many of you. She is the Acting Deputy Commissioner

22 for Operations here, at the FDA, and we are looking

175

1 forward to hearing from her about the concept of

2 the Critical Path. While they are tuning up, we

3 are going to welcome Gail Cassell who is going to

4 speak to us but who is also a member of this

5 committee, and we acknowledge that she is now

6 present.

7 Introduction to Critical Path

8 DR. WOODCOCK: Thank you. Good afternoon.

9 \[Slide\]

10 I am going to set up this afternoon\'s

11 presentations on the FDA\'s Critical Path initiative

12 and I would like to say up front that we are just

13 starting this initiative so one of the

14 purposes\--you have probably heard the questions we

15 have for the Science Board\--is to get some input.

16 This is a very complicated subject and this is

17 really the first time it has been framed in this

18 manner, to our knowledge, by any agency or

19 organization.

20 As we have been rolling this out and

21 discussing with various groups, it has become clear

22 that people have different parts of the elephant.

176

1 This is a very complex issue and there are many

2 different disciplines involved, many different

3 perspectives. So, what we have set up this

4 afternoon is to hear from a variety of different

5 perspectives, the basic science perspective, the

6 clinical perspective, the whole range of

7 development perspectives. So, we don\'t expect a

8 definitive answer today from the Board. We would

9 like some provocative questions and help in moving

10 this initiative along, but we are just in the

11 beginning stages. So, let me just get started, and

12 I am going to leave some time after my presentation

13 for questions from the Board.

14 \[Slide\]

15 The real challenge, if you get down to the

16 basics, and you have been talking about this, this

17 morning to some extent, is that there are multiple

18 serious diseases that afflict our population and

19 really need better treatments. Everything from

20 autism to obesity that has been discussed today,

21 multiple sclerosis\--just a huge number of diseases

22 that people are suffering from, schizophrenia,

177

1 stroke, and so on\--increasing incidence of chronic

2 disease.

3 \[Slide\]

4 Prevention is seems to be even more of a

5 challenge. Obviously, there is a greater

6 opportunity in prevention but primary prevention

7 still eludes us in many areas and early detection

8 and intervention, thus prevention of progression,

9 is also something that raises huge challenges for

10 us.

11 \[Slide\]

12 From the perspective of society\--and FDA

13 doesn\'t have the total role but for society there

14 is really an urgency of need for timely development

15 of new technologies driven by the aging of our

16 population, mounting burden of illnesses being

17 experienced and the benefits of prevention versus

18 secondary intervention that we are all going to

19 have to be coping with, say, with the obesity

20 epidemic that was discussed this morning.

21 But, at the same time, society requires a

22 high degree of certainty related to performance of

178

1 these medical technologies. In other words, people

2 want to have things that work. They want

3 interventions that do prevent obesity or treat

4 obesity. They want certainty about safety. Maybe

5 these interventions, these technologies are not

6 going to be 100 percent safe but we want to know

7 what their safety profile is like before we turn

8 them loose on the population. Also, society is

9 facing tremendous challenges, as you all know, with

10 providing access to technologies that are

11 available, and then affordability of those

12 technologies that are going to be developed. This

13 is kind of the framework under which we are looking

14 at the product development process.

15 \[Slide\]

16 There is tremendous optimism though that

17 we will surmount these challenges. We have

18 sequenced human genome and other animal genomes.

19 We have new genomic and proteomic technologies to

20 really probe body systems at the cellular and

21 subcellular level. With have systems biology to

22 look at the system, the organ system or cellular

179

1 system. There are advances in medical imaging that

2 are just stunning. And, we have some presentations

3 recently internally at the FDA about how this

4 imaging technology can be used in development.

5 Nanotechnology in many of our areas has tremendous

6 promise for delivery of devices, drugs, and so

7 forth; tissue engineering; and then the advances in

8 drug discovery, way on the left side of the

9 pipeline, that have really increased the number of

10 drug candidates that are available and out there

11 for evaluation.

12 \[Slide\]

13 So, there has been a tremendous amount of

14 optimism. Fueling this have been ten-year

15 investment trends and biomedical research. The NIH

16 funding has been doubled over the past five years.

17 Pharmaceutical R&D investment is following the same

18 trajectory as far as rate of rise, and there have

19 been major investments in biotechnology of all

20 kinds which are not as easily trackable but they

21 have been significant.

22 \[Slide\]

180

1 This shows ten-year trends in biomedical

2 research spending, reflected by just U.S.

3 pharmaceutical R&D spending and total NIH budget

4 spending increases. You can see these basically

5 parallel one another.

6 \[Slide\]

7 As a result of all this new knowledge, new

8 basic science breakthroughs, as well as the R&D

9 investment there has been expected a matching

10 acceleration of product development and really a

11 flood of new products coming through the pipeline

12 that we hope to see.

13 \[Slide\]

14 These are the trends for major drug and

15 biologic product submissions to FDA over the

16 matching ten years. The numbers do bounce around,

17 and so forth, but we see the reverse of the trend

18 that we are seeing in the investment side.

19 \[Slide\]

20 To get to Liz Jacobson\'s point that was

21 made this morning, here is the trend for device

22 premarket applications. The PMAs are the most

181

1 complicated devices that require special

2 submissions with special data, and so forth. This,

3 was alluded to, is an upward trend but I wouldn\'t

4 say this is an explosion of new technology either.

5 As we said, devices are different. Even

6 these PMAs may represent incremental changes to

7 existing products, and so forth. But we don\'t have

8 as good a handle, I think, on the device world and

9 it is clear that devices are more innovative right

10 now. There is more innovation actually coming out

11 of the pipeline than there is for pharmaceuticals.

12 And we agree with that.

13 \[Slide.\]

14 Now, in addition to this picture that I

15 have just showed you, medical-product development

16 costs are escalating very rapidly. The cost of

17 bringing a successful drug to market is estimated

18 between \$0.8 billion and \$1.7 billion per single

19 successful drug marketed. This loads on the costs

20 of all the failures that we discuss in the report.

21 There are a lot of candidates that are taken into

22 clinical development and, perhaps, \$500 million may

at 182

1 be spent and then they fail late in development.

2 This total cost to get a single successful product

3 loads in those failure costs.

4 These cost estimates are controversial.

5 Nevertheless, I think there is uniform agreement

6 that it is very expensive. It is very expensive

7 and it is getting much more expensive. This gets

8 back to the issue of availability, access and

9 affordability which is one of the societal

10 challenges as we develop new technologies for all

11 the diseases that our population is suffering.

12 In addition to this escalating costs, we

13 do see a higher failure rate in the pharmaceutical

14 world than traditionally, say, than a decade and a

15 half ago when more compounds that got into early

16 clinical trials made it successfully through the

17 development process.

18 It is hypothesized, at least, that this is

19 related to the fact that more difficult diseases,

20 in general, are being treated. Easier diseases

21 such as certain infectious disease, certain acute

22 diseases, and so forth, are actually easier to

at 183

1 address than some of the chronic diseases, or

2 diseases such as schizophrenia, or whatever, where

3 we don\'t really understand the underlying etiology.

4 \[Slide.\]

5 So what is the diagnosis of this problem?

6 If we agree there seems to be a problem, what is

7 the diagnosis? Basically, the central thesis of

8 our report, the stagnation report that we have put

9 out, is that we think investment and progress in

10 the basic biomedical science has surpassed the

11 investment and progress in the medical-product

12 development process.

13 So, at the left side of the pipeline,

14 there is this tremendous explosion of basic

15 scientific knowledge. But I am going to walk you

16 through, now, how we feel it hasn\'t been applied to

17 actually the process of getting these products

18 developed.

19 This process, which is called the

20 development process, is on the critical path to

21 getting these products to the patients. We think

22 it is becoming a serious bottleneck to delivery of

at 184

1 new products as the basic science enables more

2 discovery and more candidates to be identified. We

3 are using both the evaluation tools and the

4 infrastructure of the last century to develop this

5 century\'s advances. I think, from the FDA, we

6 think there is no doubt about this although it is

7 spotty and we certainly have advances in certain

8 areas. Let me go through this a little bit more.

9 \[Slide.\]

10 Our prescription for this diagnosis, which

11 is the central part of this report, is that we

12 believe the society, we collectively, should

13 utilize the new scientific knowledge not only to

14 discover products but to improve the development

15 process and make it more effective.

16 We need to develop robust applied research

17 programs into these critical-path science areas to

18 lead to generalized knowledge that all developers

19 can pick up and use as they are trying to bring a

20 product through the path. We need to strengthen

21 the academic bases for these critical-path

22 disciplines\--and I will discuss this more in a

at 185

1 minute\--and we need to intensify FDA involvement in

2 critical-path research and standards development to

3 make this happen because we feel the kind of

4 knowledge is central to helping us move along.

5 \[Slide.\]

6 Now, what do I mean by the critical path

7 for medical-product development. This schematic

8 shows a very generalized product-development path

9 that kind of includes devices and drugs and so

10 forth, so it is overly generalized. But,

11 basically, you start with basic research

12 information and move into, for drugs, what is

13 called the discovery phase, finding candidates and

14 targets.

15 For devices, you are designing prototypes.

16 You move into a phase called preclinical

17 development where you take your selected candidate

18 or candidates and you work them up and you try to

19 select the most promising ones. If you have a

20 promising candidate, at some point, you can move

21 into the clinic and there you are going to really

22 be spending big bucks and you are going to start

at 186

1 doing progressive clinical testing, evaluating the

2 product and seeing whether or not it has those

3 characteristics of performance, the effectiveness,

4 the safety that you are looking for.

5 We put the critical path starting

6 somewhere in the middle of that prototype, design

7 or discovery phase and moving all the way through

8 to getting the product onto the market.

9 \[Slide.\]

10 There are really three dimensions that we

11 have identified from the basis of our knowledge in

12 overseeing tens of thousands of these development

13 programs. First of all, you have to assess safety

14 progressively, as you move down the path. When it

15 is a twinkle in the eye, an idea in the laboratory,

16 it is not that critical. But, very quickly, you

17 have to start thinking about, is this intervention

18 going to be safe and how do we evaluate the safety

19 of this, first predictively and then

20 confirmatively.

21 Second of all, you want to show, as we

22 said earlier, the product works. The whole reason

at 187

1 people are going to pay for this, give you money,

2 is that it would be effective and would treat their

3 condition. From the very earliest phases,

4 developers are evaluating the candidates and trying

5 to predict are they going to work. This is very

6 difficult to select those candidates or prototypes

7 that actually will be effective.

8 The third dimension, which is really

9 ignored by a lot of folks in the science community

10 because they don\'t have to deal with it, is the

11 industrialization aspect. You may have the

12 greatest idea in the world and, if you can\'t

13 mass-produce it, you are not going to have a

14 product at the end of the day that you can market.

15 So, from the very earliest stages, you

16 have to be tailoring that product and scaling it up

17 and designing it in a way that it can be reliably

18 manufactured. That is an area where FDA puts a

19 great deal of emphasis because we see, at the end

20 of the day, a lot of failures of products that

21 cannot be reliably manufactured.

22 \[Slide.\]

at 188

1 Now, the complexity of this and the

2 problem of explaining this and the reason you are

3 going to hear a lot of different perspectives this

4 afternoon is this critical path is extremely

5 complicated for any given product line, shall we

6 say. These three dimensions each have whole

7 departments, huge departments, in companies devoted

8 to them and there are actually whole industries

9 that work in little areas here such as

10 contract-toxicology or clinical-research

11 organizations, or all sorts of things,

12 contract-manufacturing organizations and so on,

13 that function throughout these dimensions of the

14 critical path.

15 But, basically, you are working very early

16 during the prototype design or discovery. You are

17 trying to predict safety and you have a variety of

18 ways that you try to do that. You try to select

19 materials that have already been known to be safe.

20 You try to look at structure-activity relationship,

21 say, on a computer or other ways that you can

22 predict safety. Medical utility; back in the

at 189

1 prototype design or discovery area, you are really

2 looking at test-tube models, in vitro models, to

3 see if the compound, if it is a drug, intervenes on

4 a pathway of interest and what the in vitro

5 findings are.

6 You might do consumption modeling for a

7 device. At the same phase, you are working with

8 that physical design of the product. Then you move

9 later into animal testing. You are trying to do

10 the same thing. Finally, you move into human

11 testing. So there will be a great deal of

12 discussion from different perspectives this

13 afternoon from all our presenters. Many of them

14 will just focus on one area on this critical path

15 in one of these three dimensions.

16 \[Slide.\]

17 Why do I say that the science base hasn\'t

18 been robust enough and that is our diagnosis.

19 Well, the science necessary to evaluate and predict

20 safety and effectiveness and to enable

21 manufacturing is actually from the science that

22 generates the new ideas. It is a different kind.

at 190

1 It is more applied science.

2 In general, NIH and academia do not focus

3 their research in this area. It has been primarily

4 done in the private sector. Critical-path research

5 is complementary to basic and translational

6 research but it results in the creation of new

7 tools for product development, and usually

8 generalized tools, not very specific tools. Let me

9 talk about this a little bit more.

10 The basic research feeds into all these

11 types of research, obviously, because basic science

12 research is foundational. Translational research,

13 which NIH is now focusing more on its road-map

14 initiative is typically involved in a specific

15 product or type of products and moving those along

16 from discovery into the early clinical development.

17 If you read the literature, there are lots of

18 definitions of translational research but that is

19 sort of the most consensus definition.

20 Critical-path research, we feel, underlies

21 many of these later phases but is a fundamentally

22 different kind of enterprise. So I am going to

at 191

1 talk a little bit about what kind of tools might be

2 developed by using critical-path research to give

3 you a better idea.

4 \[Slide.\]

5 We call these, in general, evaluative

6 tools because what the developer is trying to do is

7 figure out whether or not this product is going to

8 work and whether it will be safe. In the early

9 stages, the developers used scientific tools to

10 select candidates that they predict will have a

11 high probability of safety and effectiveness. This

12 is because the failure rate is such a big problem.

13 If you develop your product all the way

14 into the clinic and then find out it doesn\'t work,

15 you are burdening the system with a tremendous

16 number of failed products and you are driving up

17 the costs. Typically, developers use laboratory

18 tests, consumption models and animal studies to

19 make these predictions of safety and effectiveness.

20 \[Slide.\]

21 In the later stages of development, human

22 testing is used to confirm these predictions. But

at 192

1 the very early human safety-and-efficacy testing

2 isn\'t extensive enough to do that, Phase I, Phase

3 II. So their preliminary estimates are made, \"We

4 hope this product is going to work,\" based on

5 biomarkers, various markers that can be used to

6 look at human response.

7 Then, if you get into a Phase III trial or

8 a confirmatory trial, then you would finally be

9 sure that your predictions were correct. So these

10 are the general types of tools we are talking

11 about.

12 \[Slide.\]

13 To get into specific examples, what would

14 be a predictive safety tool. This is something we

15 don\'t have right now. What if you could use a

16 genomic-expression system of maybe liver cells to

17 evaluate a compound\'s impact on liver-cell

18 function. This would help a lot, say, in looking

19 at hepatotoxicity.

20 Right now, over the last decade, we have

21 developed liver-cell assays that actually can tell

22 how the liver metabolizes drug compounds and

at 193

1 predicts hepatic metabolism. This has been

2 extremely helpful in screening out candidates that

3 have unfavorable metabolic profiles, drug-drug

4 interactions, and so forth. But right now we don\'t

5 have a way to screen, say, on a genomic basis, for

6 potential liver toxicology.

7 This is an example of an evaluative tool

8 that everyone could use. You could use it for

9 device constituents, biomaterials. You could use

10 it for drugs and biologics and help weed out

11 compounds that, much later, would be found to be an

12 hepatotoxin.

13 \[Slide.\]

14 What about another predictive safety tool.

15 CBER has been trying to develop some of this,

16 reference standards and test systems for

17 gene-therapy vector potency. It is obviously

18 extremely important for gene-therapy vectors as a

19 safety issue that you have a very good handle on

20 the potency of those vectors. That is a

21 standardized safety tool that is needed, so you can

22 compare your lots of your vector in a standard

at 194

1 assay to make sure you are hitting the right

2 target.

3 \[Slide.\]

4 What about predictive efficacy tools. One

5 of the problems with devices is they are

6 continuously being modified and those modifications

7 can stack up behind human testing because the

8 engineers can work a whole lot faster than the

9 doctors. If we had better computer models that

10 could model and predict the outcomes of these

11 device modifications, that tool could be used very

12 extensively to accept certain levels of changes in

13 devices without going to human testing. Actually,

14 our device reviewers feel that these tools could be

15 developed. They think this is possible.

16 \[Slide.\]

17 Another predictive efficacy tool would be

18 a quantitative biomarker that could be used both in

19 animal and early human trials to indicate the

20 effect of the drug, give us that good predictive

21 test early and guide dose and regimen decisions, so

22 you are not floundering around in the dark until

at 195

1 you get up into the efficacy trials.

2 We have had very few new biomarkers being

3 emerging in the last decade. It is one of the

4 problems with the science base.

5 \[Slide.\]

6 Another kind of safety tool, and you might

7 not think of this as a safety tool, but we need

8 standardized, acceptable trial designs to assess

9 specific safety risks, a consensus view on, okay,

10 if you do this trial design and you run your

11 compound through it, you do this trial design and

12 you run your compound through it, you have

13 addressed this question, this uncertainty, to the

14 degree that you need to; for example,

15 hepatotoxicity, electrocardiographic changes that

16 may cause cardiac arrhythmias, and so forth.

17 We don\'t have enough of these standardized

18 trial designs out there. So each developer is

19 forced to work with the FDA and try and figure out

20 how this question will be addressed each time and

21 how much residual uncertainty would be acceptable.

22 So this is a different kind of tool.

at 196

1 \[Slide.\]

2 I think Rob Califf will be talking about

3 this this afternoon, but another confirmatory tool

4 would be an available clinical-trial network that

5 you could run your compound through to rapidly and

6 efficiently answer specific safety queries using a

7 large simple-trial format; in other words, a

8 network in which compounds could be plugged into to

9 answer these questions.

10 Right now, again, the clinical-trial

11 infrastructure in the United States, the developers

12 are having to\--each time, they have to create the

13 infrastructure in the trial network to answer these

14 questions. It is very laborious. It is very

15 time-consuming, adds years, often, to a development

16 program.

17 \[Slide.\]

18 A confirmatory efficacy tool that everyone

19 wants to have but I am going to get into later how

20 much actual design work and scientific work has to

21 go into this, would be an FDA guidance document of

22 how to use a specific technology as an accepted

at 197

1 surrogate marker for a condition with a specific

2 clinical-trial framework.

3 So the question is, you do this trial and

4 you use this marker in this fashion, and then that

5 is acceptable as a marker for efficacy in this

6 condition for this claim. Everyone probably who is

7 a product developer would like to have access to a

8 tool like that, but we have very few of them and

9 there are not that many on the horizon.

10 \[Slide.\]

11 Devices has actually done this one in one

12 case, and we have it in the paper, to have a

13 consortium-based trial framework to allow

14 manufacturers to pool resources in a single trial

15 to answer a specific efficacy question pertaining

16 to a class of devices or drugs, or a specific

17 safety question.

18 In the example in the report, they pooled

19 studies for digital mammography to look at was

20 there an advantage over plain-film mammography.

21 Several manufacturers were able to pool their data

22 to attempt to answer that question. But this is,

at 198

1 again, something that isn\'t at hand for people

2 right now.

3 \[Slide.\]

4 Another tool, and I hope Rob will talk

5 about this a little, would be to standardize the

6 clinical infrastructure more so that we have

7 standardized case-report forms and data-collection

8 and data-format standards for clinical trials so

9 that developers are not constantly inventing new

10 case-report forms, new data standards, the

11 investigators are not having to deal with this each

12 time different\--this would be a tremendous benefit

13 to the clinical-research enterprise.

14 \[Slide.\]

15 So those are examples. You could see it

16 is a very wide range of examples, all the way from

17 new laboratory tests of different kinds to

18 clinical-trial networks and data standards. I

19 think the presenters this afternoon will go over

20 all the different aspects of this in different

21 ways.

22 I just have a few more. I want to finish

at 199

1 up so we have some time for questions, but I want

2 to talk about our initiative and how this fits in.

3 The first part of my talk was really to frame this

4 problem and we seek input on whether this is a

5 correct definition, diagnosis, framing of the

6 problem.

7 This is what we are doing now. Our

8 initiative is a serious attempt to bring attention

9 and focus to the need for targeted scientific

10 efforts to modernize these techniques and methods

11 that are used to evaluate the safety, efficacy and

12 quality of the medical products as they move from

13 selection and design all the way to the bedside.

14 So it is this evaluation pathway.

15 \[Slide.\]

16 We are trying basically to address the

17 problem I presented at the beginning of my talk.

18 We need to get more innovative products to

19 patients. We want the fruits of the biomedical

20 revolution to actually translate into better

21 health. We want to achieve robust

22 product-development pathways that are efficient and

at 200

1 predictable and I can tell you we simply do not

2 have that now. That is what is driving the cost

3 and taking the time.

4 We think we need to develop new tool kits

5 that bring the scientific advances into the

6 development process, not just the discovery

7 process. We, and others, we feel, should perform

8 research on tools that remove specific identified

9 obstacles in product development. That is how we

10 are planning to address this.

11 The question is why\--and we have gotten

12 this when we issued the report\--like, why did FDA

13 issue this report? What role do you have?

14 \[Slide.\]

15 I would like to point out FDA scientists

16 are involved in the review during the product

17 development. We are there soon, actually, often,

18 right before, these products get into people. The

19 scientists are involved in evaluation all during

20 the development process and then the review

21 process. Then, once the products are out on the

22 market, sometimes, they experience safety failures

at 201

1 even at that time.

2 But, during development, our scientists

3 see the successes, failures and the missed

4 opportunities that are occurring. FDA guidance

5 documents, we have noticed, are known to foster

6 innovation and improve chances of success, the

7 existence of these guidance documents, and they

8 seem to. Where there is clarity in a development

9 pathway, in a critical path, it fosters attention

10 and innovation and investment in that product area.

11 So, where developers see a clear path forward, they

12 will focus their innovation in that area.

13 We have, in the past, had a convening and

14 coordinating role for new biomarker and

15 clinical-methods development and, when we have done

16 that, it has been extremely successful; for

17 example, in the HIV area in stimulating and helping

18 that development move forward efficiently.

19 \[Slide.\]

20 This is in the Critical Path Report. It

21 is a little too complicated to explain totally in a

22 slide, but what we see happening is, on the

at 202

1 left-hand corner up there, during the application

2 review, either the investigational product

3 oversight or the marketing application, the

4 problems arise. That is what we are always dealing

5 with. If there are no problems in product

6 development, then things just go right through.

7 But we are seeing all these problems that

8 arise; difficulty in prediction, unexpected safety

9 problems that arise, difficulty in determining the

10 correct dose or design. As we identify these

11 problems and if they become generalizable\--in other

12 words, we see them across more than one product\--we

13 often try to refer them, through scientific

14 research, to academia. We take them to our

15 advisory committees, try to get a discussion going

16 about what the problem is and how it can be

17 surmounted.

18 We go back and forth between public input

19 and research and, hopefully, we achieve some

20 solutions. You will hear about that from some of

21 our presenters, the FDA presenters, this afternoon.

22 We achieve solutions in many areas, but it is

at 203

1 limited by the amount of resources we can put

2 against it.

3 Eventually, if we have recommended a

4 scientific approach, as we take these to our

5 advisory committees or we publish guidance, we have

6 a public process for discussion and then that

7 becomes a public standard that developers can use.

8 So they can pick up that standard, if they have a

9 product, and they can just apply it. They don\'t

10 have to develop it. They don\'t have to agonize

11 over it. That is the standard they can use. We

12 find that this really facilitates development.

13 \[Slide.\]

14 Let me just use an example, and this slide

15 is out of order. So skip to the next one. For

16 biomarker or surrogate-marker development, what

17 usually occurs now. And you are in the scientific

18 community. This is what I think occurs; right? A

19 marker is developed by an academic or industrial

20 scientist as part of a research project.

21 They publish the method and it get picked

22 up in additional laboratories and people

at 204

1 start\--they are interested in this marker, whatever

2 it is, some blood test or metabolic test or

3 whatever. Then it begins to be adopted by academic

4 clinicians and it might be in a kind of home-brew

5 format; in other words, it is not an FDA-approved

6 test. It is something that is available and people

7 use.

8 Then this biomarker gets into widespread

9 clinical use and people start trying it on their

10 patients in the clinic, not usually in trials,

11 maybe series; we tested this in people and they

12 progressed and here it is, a ten-patient series,

13 100-patient series. Then gradually it begins to be

14 used in trials. People think, maybe this is a

15 promising biomarker. We will put it our trial and

16 we will use it.

17 The sponsors will present it to FDA to

18 say, we have this biomarker in our trial. We don\'t

19 know what it means, but here are the results of

20 this biomarker. Then publicly, and in scientific

21 journals, there are calls for us, as a biomarker or

22 a surrogate marker, to use this biomarker, okay,

at 205

1 because everybody has gotten used to it and think

2 it should be used. It might be promising.

3 But then we get stuck as a society. What

4 happens next? There are calls to use it. We have

5 had biomarkers that have been in this status for

6 twenty years.

7 \[Slide.\]

8 Now I will get back to that other slide.

9 The question is how do you accumulate this existing

10 data into knowledge. We have all these

11 publications about this biomarker. People have

12 kind of used it and everything, and like it, but

13 how do you turn it into something that is actually

14 knowledge or a generalized principle that you can

15 actually use and rely upon.

16 That is really one of the issues here.

17 Who is responsible for doing this? That is

18 something that we are raising in the critical-path

19 arena. I am using biomarkers as an example because

20 they are so important to this endeavor.

21 Who is going to pool all the data and

22 analyze it, do this cross-series and cross-study

at 206

1 analysis? Who is going to evaluate the primary

2 data, not just published summary data, but who is

3 going to look at the primary data and say, how does

4 this really stack up? Who is going to identify the

5 gaps?

6 Usually, what you find\--everybody is

7 talking about the biomarker. They say it is great.

8 When you really get to look at the data and you

9 look at the outcomes, you find gaps. There are

10 gaps in our knowledge. We don\'t really have

11 generalizable knowledge. We don\'t have principles

12 yet.

13 Who is going to conceive and conduct

14 research that would actually close these gaps and

15 make this into a biomarker that developers can rely

16 upon or a true surrogate marker that could be used

17 for approval?

18 I am using biomarker as an example here

19 because I think this really summarizes the problem.

20 This is the development of an evaluative tool to a

21 level where it can be used in product development.

22 I think our thesis is, right now, nobody is in

at 207

1 charge of doing this. And this is one of the

2 problems because then it doesn\'t happen.

3 So we will skip on.

4 \[Slide.\]

5 Now, why could FDA play a role here? We

6 believe, and we have been told by Congress, that

7 access to medical technology, providing that is

8 part of our mission. The FDA is responsible to

9 advance the public health by helping to speed

10 innovation. This is from one of our publications.

11 We are in a health-promotion role as well as a

12 health-protection role at the FDA and so we feel

13 not only are we integral in the process because we

14 see all these problems, but improving this process

15 is part of our mission.

16 \[Slide.\]

17 So, what we have done, we have published

18 this initial report called The Innovation

19 Stagnation Report that was announced by

20 Commissioner McClellan and Duputy Commissioner

21 Crawford on March 16. Today\'s presentation to the

22 Science Board is really our science kickoff of this

at 208

1 in the sense of having a substantive discussion.

2 We have been started extensive discussions

3 with a lot of stakeholder groups, industry,

4 academia, government and the patient groups are

5 very important. We feel that patient groups really

6 need to have a voice in this. We have one letter

7 written, I think, by one of the HIV activist

8 groups. We agree. We agree that, when you are

9 talking about biomarkers and outcome measures and

10 clinical-trial design and with claim, the patient

11 groups must also have a real voice in this.

12 We have had really positive feedback so

13 far from all these groups about the fact that we

14 have identified a problem that needs to be

15 addressed, but we really seek your input today.

16 \[Slide.\]

17 What we plan to do, in concrete terms, is

18 we can\'t take on this whole problem. We think

19 identifying it is extremely helpful. We plan to

20 identify and prioritize the most severe barriers,

21 development barriers and problems, in the areas

22 that provide the greatest opportunity by soliciting

at 209

1 input from a wide variety of sources.

2 Then we are going to construct a national

3 critical-path opportunities list because we think

4 identifying these barriers and opportunities will

5 give us something that will be concrete enough for

6 people to make this real. We will publicize this

7 list.

8 We are also really making sure we focus

9 our internal activities as far as our process, make

10 sure we have efficient ways of surfacing and

11 identifying these problems. We can\'t solve them

12 all but we need to surface them up and make them

13 public and identify them in a way that the

14 community can deal with them. And then we seek

15 community concurrence on additional steps once we

16 get our final list together which we hope we should

17 do by early fall.

18 \[Slide.\]

19 Conclusions; I think FDA\'s Critical Path

20 Report raises serious concerns about the ability of

21 the current development process to get innovations

22 to patients rapidly and efficiently. We believe

at 210

1 this is becoming more serious with the pressure on

2 the basic-science side. Preliminary discussions

3 with key experts in industry and academia are

4 validating this analysis of the development

5 problem.

6 \[Slide.\]

7 We are continuing our dialogue with a wide

8 range of stakeholders to try and reach agreement on

9 the problem scope and the problem definition. So

10 we are still early. We are also working on

11 defining specific opportunities to overcome these

12 hurdles with concrete deliverable steps that could

13 be accomplished.

14 \[Slide.\]

15 We have just opened a web address and a

16 docket. I have these here and they are in the

17 handouts for people. So we welcome comments both

18 to our docket and people can refer to our web

19 address, and we will be updating that with events

20 and other information.

21 Thank you.

22 DR. SHINE: Janet, thank you very much.

at 211

1 I think it is worth spending a few minutes

2 for questions for Janet that you might have on the

3 way she has laid out these issues.

4 Janet, a couple of things I would put on

5 the table. One is you have shown us data for ten

6 years. It would be very helpful to have a

7 long-term view of how much of this is cyclical,

8 have we seen examples of ups and downs over time,

9 what is the periodicity, and so forth.

10 The second question I would have is, one

11 of the major changes in the \'90\'s was the move to

12 genetics, genomics, and so forth. It was clear in

13 talking to many of my colleagues who are in the

14 pharmaceutical business that they really thought

15 that it was going to be pretty easy to identify

16 targets as the genome went forward and that it was

17 going to be a slam-dunk in terms of getting

18 products out.

19 It turned out that was very hard. I am

20 wondering, and I think I would like to hear from

21 some of our other speakers about this issue as

22 well, how much of the downturn that you have

at 212

1 described in the \'90\'s is, in fact, betting on the

2 wrong paradigm and that there is a fundamental

3 problem with that paradigm that will require

4 evolution of the paradigm if it is going to produce

5 new products.

6 Finally, you have pointed out that a great

7 deal of the difficulty arises out of having the

8 methodologies that allow development and

9 association of efficacy, safety and so forth, to

10 develop. In a number of other industries\--I am

11 thinking now about the roadmap in the

12 semi-conductor industry.

13 SemiTech in the computer industry, in

14 fact, put together resources around common

15 technologies. They still maintain their

16 proprietary interest in the drug that they were

17 developing, but when there was a need for having

18 some methodology which was the infrastructure, have

19 you had any discussions about the concept of an

20 industrial public-private kind of enterprise which

21 would, if you will, recapitulate, and I am using

22 SemiTech as an example. There are things that are

at 213

1 similar. There are things that are different. I

2 understand. But I would be interested in your

3 comments.

4 DR. WOODCOCK: I actually violently agree

5 with that. I think that this is a matter of almost

6 industrial policy in the United States, this

7 industry, the medical-product industry and its

8 research base which is applied research as well as

9 basic-science research.

10 We have looked, in the context of our

11 manufacturing initiative, our GMP initiative\--we

12 looked at the collaborations in the semi-conductor

13 industry. In fact, this is a very good model in

14 how that improved quality and the speed, agility,

15 of that industry and so forth. We have had

16 preliminary discussions with the manufacturing

17 sector of medical products around this very

18 concept. I think this is a very important concept

19 for us to explore.

20 As far as your second question, we think

21 that the downturn is not the whole story here. We

22 recognize that is multifactorial and might have

at 214

1 resulted from corporate mergers. It might have

2 resulted from the fact that, in our estimation, I

3 think our technical estimation, and I will ask some

4 of the CDER scientists in the room, that genomics

5 or any of these new technologies take about fifteen

6 to twenty years before they really start paying

7 off.

8 But I think the problem we see is here are

9 these tremendous societal needs and expectations

10 out there and this is what we are getting out of

11 the pipeline right now. And the causes of that you

12 can debate. But the question is what can we do

13 about it, right now?

14 DR. HARLANDER: I really applaud FDA for

15 creating this Critical Path Document because I

16 think it identifies precisely the issues that they

17 are facing. But I think it also opens up\--puts

18 tremendous pressure on the agency, itself,

19 because\--and this is my first meeting, so I haven\'t

20 been able to tour all of the centers that would be

21 involved in providing the kind of scientific

22 support that you would need to really provide the

at 215

1 foundation for policy development, standards and

2 guidance development.

3 Do you have the scientific expertise and

4 the financial resources that you would really need

5 to have in order to support the development of

6 these kinds of technologies?

7 DR. WOODCOCK: We do what we can with what

8 we have. No. I mean, we are doing what we can now

9 with what we have.

10 DR. HARLANDER: But you don\'t have a lot.

11 DR. WOODCOCK: We do not have a lot. Say,

12 in certain areas like the drugs area, there is

13 virtually almost no laboratory support available.

14 But we don\'t conceive of this initiative as all

15 being done internal to FDA. We believe one of our

16 roles is really being able to see and generate and

17 identify all these problems and that a wide variety

18 of stakeholders needs to work together, as was just

19 alluded to, to kind of try to address some of

20 these.

21 But, even to do that role effectively, in

22 a broad way, would require more scientific

at 216

1 resources than we have available to us now.

2 DR. SHINE: Cecil?

3 DR. PICKETT: Again, Janet, I would like

4 to echo Susan\'s remarks, particularly about

5 complementing, again, the FDA on taking up this

6 initiative. I think it is going to be very

7 valuable. I think it will be a framework that both

8 the FDA and industry and other stakeholders can

9 have a rationale conversation about how to improve

10 the development of new drugs.

11 Just a couple of comments. One of the

12 things that I have seen missing in the

13 documentation has to do with regulatory guidelines

14 and harmonization of regulatory guidelines. As you

15 know, we oftentimes have slightly different

16 guidelines depending on whether or not we are

17 filing in the European Union or Japan or here in

18 the U.S. I think that is one area that can

19 certainly help speed up overall drug development.

20 So I would hope that could somehow be part of the

21 discussion.

22 DR. WOODCOCK: What we did here was to\--we

at 217

1 wanted, in the critical-path part, to have a

2 discussion of the science because I believe that if

3 we\--and we agree that regulatory streamlining, or

4 whatever, is another effort that is a continuous

5 challenge and we need to keep working on and we are

6 working on.

7 But, if you default your discussion or

8 start your discussion, frankly, around regulatory

9 standards, then people tend to forget that there is

10 a basic science infrastructure that must be in

11 place. They tend to forget the point of this

12 report and they default to the issue of, well, it

13 is just regulatory requirements and everything.

14 So I think we all have to be careful

15 because, if it is just regulatory requirements,

16 then there is no science problem. If we agree

17 there is a science problem, then we really to

18 address the science problem.

19 DR. PICKETT: But, again, regulatory

20 requirements are based upon sound science.

21 DR. WOODCOCK: Agreed. The more robust

22 applied scientific infrastructure we have available

at 218

1 to us, the more rationale and targeted and actually

2 less conservative our requirements can be because

3 it drives more certainty.

4 DR. PICKETT: I just want to follow up on

5 Ken\'s comment about whether or not it is the wrong

6 paradigm in terms of drug discovery and

7 development. I don\'t think the paradigm is wrong.

8 I think what has been incorrect is the expectation

9 part.

10 DR. SHINE: Much like gene therapy, the

11 expectation is that it would come very quickly.

12 Let\'s go to John and then I think, Gail,

13 we are going to let you talk and you can engage in

14 the conversation at that point. John?

15 DR. THOMAS: Establishing priorities is a

16 noble adventure and certainly some companies are

17 going to stake out their area based on their

18 expertise. To some extent, we have already done

19 that. If you just want to be so crass as to go

20 down the list of diseases and discover how much we

21 spend per patient, that could translate back to

22 what a society can afford to pay for.

at 219

1 But then you get into the predicament of

2 diabetes melitis, for example, probably one of the

3 most expensive diseases to treat because of all the

4 other ramifications that you have. So there you

5 are not really treating one disease. You are

6 treating several, a constellation, of diseases.

7 The other thing, in establishing

8 priorities in terms of therapeutics, it seems to me

9 you have go to accommodate short-term versus

10 long-term therapy and then something, which we

11 already have in place, is to deal with orphan

12 drugs. That has got to be given some consideration

13 as you go forth in establishing priorities. I

14 don\'t have the answer to that, but just

15 observations that throw money at one disease versus

16 another disease. I guess the empty tin can rattles

17 the loudest and that, in some cases, historically,

18 has determined what would constitute resources

19 going towards a given pathology or disease entity,

20 which you are not going to be able to exclude.

21 DR. WOODCOCK: That is an intriguing

22 suggestion, that we look at the burden of disease,

at 220

1 economic burden or other burden of disease, in

2 thinking about this. Many of these technologies,

3 these evaluative technologies, will cut across many

4 products and diseases but, in the later stages,

5 obviously for the effectiveness prediction, then

6 you are narrowing it down to a specific disorder.

7 DR. SHINE: Janet, I know you are going to

8 stay around because one of the questions\--the

9 report emphasizes that the strategies used for

10 orphan diseases could be used more generally. I

11 want to come back to that in terms of how you think

12 that is happening. But thank you very much.

13 We have got six presentations we want to

14 hear from and I want to be sure that they each get

15 their chance. Each of them is twenty minutes. The

16 first is a perspective on anti-infectives and

17 vaccines that Gail is doing. As you know, she is

18 Vice President for Scientific Affairs and the

19 Distinguished Lilly Research Scholar for Infectious

20 Diseases.

21 You should be aware that our Acting

22 Commissioner made reference to the fact that you

at 221

1 also have an Alabama heritage where Gail was an

2 extraordinarily distinguished Chair of the

3 Department of Microbiology as well as a national

4 leader in this area. So we are looking forward to

5 her perspective.

6 Gail?

7 Perspective on Anti-Infectives and Vaccines

8 DR. CASSELL: Thank you, Ken, for those

9 nice comments, and Lester. I really am

10 appreciative of the opportunity to share with you

11 some thoughts this afternoon as it relates to

12 anti-infectives and vaccines. Obviously, in twenty

13 minutes, I can\'t do justice to both. So what I

14 will try to focus on are antibiotics and the

15 critical need for new antibiotics.

16 First of all, I would just like to say

17 that I would begin by talking about the current

18 need, the current status of development of

19 anti-infectives and then what relationship I think

20 the Critical Path Initiative has to these needs,

21 opportunities, priorities and next steps.

22 First of all, I would like to say that I

at 222

1 am wildly enthusiastic about this initiative and I

2 shared the document very early on with Josh

3 Lederberg, a friend who won the Nobel Prize when he

4 was in his early 40\'s for microbial genetics and

5 has had a long-term interest in FDA and development

6 of new drugs. I don\'t think he would mind my

7 sharing with you this afternoon his comment, and

8 that was he found this document to be one of the

9 most refreshing that he has read in a long time.

10 He was very excited to see this initiative and FDA

11 really taking leadership. I think we could all say

12 that.

13 With regards to the current need for

14 antibiotics but also antivirals and vaccines, I

15 would draw your attention to an IOM report that was

16 released last March, March of 2003, in which

17 antibiotic drug discovery and development as well

18 as vaccine development was declared a crisis

19 worldwide.

20 The reason for the declaration of the

21 crisis is because of the current thinness of the

22 pipeline, both as it relates to vaccines as well as

at 223

1 antibiotics and antivirals, other than HIV and,

2 perhaps, hepatitis as well as maybe herpes, but,

3 other than that, certainly lacking in that regard.

4 With respect to antibiotics, the reason

5 for the declaration of a crisis is because of the

6 current experience that we have with antibiotic

7 resistance and the fact that we have several

8 pathogens for which now strains have been

9 identified for which there are no remaining

10 antibiotics left. In fact, last week, you may have

11 read about the new strain of Salmonella isolated in

12 Taiwan which was resistant to every antibiotic

13 tested. This is a food-borne pathogen which does

14 give cause for concern. And I could go down the

15 list.

16 What you may not appreciate, however, is

17 that tuberculosis is one of the oldest infectious

18 diseases. One-third of the world\'s population

19 remain infected with latent t.b. and now there is a

20 tremendous increase in multi-drug-resistant strains

21 of t.b. If you heard, on March 16, the release of

22 the new WHO report. These strains are increasing

at 224

1 with a great deal of frequency worldwide and the

2 five antibiotics, four at most, left to treat MDR

3 t.b., all with the exception of a quinolone, are

4 over 40 years old.

5 So this, if nothing else, should

6 illustrate the need for new therapies with respect

7 to antibiotics. We also have new and emerging

8 infections, and I don\'t need to remind you of SARS

9 or the ongoing problem that we have right now with

10 bird flu which would require an antiviral and

11 vaccine.

12 Lastly, in terms of need and the reason

13 for the statement of the crisis by the IOM report

14 is the fact that we have the threat of

15 intentionally released microorganisms in the way of

16 bioterrorism threats and, if you were to take a

17 look at the threats on the Select A, B, C list and

18 try to match that up with our armamentarium

19 currently with respect to antibiotics, vaccines and

20 antivirals, you would see just how bare the

21 cupboard really is.

22 Enough said about the need. What does the

at 225

1 pipeline look like? I have just completed, along

2 with some of my colleagues, a review of the current

3 antibiotics in the pipeline, and antivirals, using

4 the four most commonly used private databases in

5 terms of what is in clinical development. I can

6 tell you this afternoon that we should not rest

7 assured that the pipeline is full.

8 In fact, it is currently bare with respect

9 to any new antibiotics in clinical development with

10 most of those, if not all of them, being slight

11 versions of the old classes with particular

12 emphasis on new quinolones listed. There is an

13 obvious difference between what we see in the

14 pipeline compared to what we would have seen ten

15 years ago, and that is that most of the antibiotics

16 are being developed by biotech companies and

17 companies outside the U.S. as opposed to in the

18 U.S. as opposed to typical large pharma.

19 You have been seeing a lot in the public

20 press about large companies having gotten out of

21 development of antibiotics and, often, it is said,

22 that the only reason for that is lack of market or

at 226

1 market insufficient to recoup investment in

2 development of new antibiotics.

3 What I want to impress upon you today is

4 that is just one of many reasons that most

5 companies have chosen to invest resources in other

6 areas. There are equally compelling unmet medical

7 needs that do have larger markets and the

8 scientific opportunities are as great, or greater,

9 in those areas.

10 What I do want you to hear me say is that

11 there are still significant technical challenges in

12 antibiotic drug discovery. From 1980 to 1990,

13 antibiotic drug discovery was primarily

14 serendipity, as was most drug discovery. However,

15 in the early \'90\'s, mainly because of public

16 pressure and the view for need of new antibiotics,

17 a great effort was put in place by most

18 pharmaceutical companies using the new

19 technologies.

20 The first microbial genome was completed

21 in 1993, and many followed shortly thereafter. So

22 it is not due to lack of targets. We have a

at 227

1 plethora of targets. Where there is a need is an

2 increase in chemical diversity and a better

3 understanding of the interactions of the different

4 targets that we currently are trying to develop

5 inhibitors for.

6 Now, what I would like to also say,

7 however, is that, with respect to antibiotic

8 development, it is unlike other drugs that one

9 might develop and that is you generally don\'t

10 develop a single antibiotic for a single

11 indication. So the large numbers of patients

12 required for the different indications that one

13 would want to develop are very important

14 considerations when you look at cost.

15 The other thing that I think is a problem

16 is that many in the infectious-disease community,

17 leading authorities, in the late \'90\'s and even as

18 late as 2000 were saying there was no need for new

19 antibiotics, that we had enough antibiotics

20 especially those that were practicing in primary

21 care, pediatrics, OB-GYN. When one would conduct

22 focus groups to gather data to support continued

at 228

1 development, the response was that we had enough.

2 So this raises the problem that we have

3 when we talk about treatment of infectious diseases

4 particularly those that are bacterially induced,

5 and also virally induced, and that is we need new

6 and improved diagnostics. So I just wanted to say

7 that I think that some of the critical-path issues

8 are particularly relevant to the ability to develop

9 new diagnostics and the use of them to promote more

10 judicious use of the agents that we do have but

11 also to identify new opportunities with respect to

12 new agents that are out there.

13 Now, I just wanted to talk a little bit

14 about the potential changes that have occurred just

15 in the last two or three years that I think will

16 have a significant impact on antibiotic and

17 antiviral drug development.

18 One is a major advance which, actually,

19 the Critical Path Document does refer to and I want

20 to elaborate just a little bit, and that is, when

21 it became obvious that no one was focused on

22 development of new drugs for t.b. and malaria, the

at 229

1 public pressure grew and public-private

2 partnerships were established, the Gates Foundation

3 and the Rockefeller Foundation being the primary

4 funders for these public-private partnerships.

5 The two primary ones are the Malarias

6 Ventures for Medicine and the Global Alliance for

7 T.B. I spent last week at the Wellcome Trust

8 reviewing these PPPs, as we call them, and I think

9 it is a very exciting new approach to drug

10 discovery and development. In fact, the thing I

11 like best about the Critical Path Initiative is the

12 realization that there is a lot of synergy between

13 research in the public and private sector that is

14 relevant as it relates to drug discovery

15 development. We should admit that, all of us, as

16 well as the public and Congress and figure out how

17 we can better have these two sectors working

18 together in the area of drug discovery and develop.

19 The PPPs actually have the potential to

20 bring together the best of the best from both the

21 public and the private sectors. So I think that,

22 if anything, I would say, Janet, I hope that, in

at 230

1 the next steps that you have outlined and the

2 groups that you are bringing together, that you

3 won\'t talk to the public sector in isolation from

4 industry, et cetera.

5 I think it is going to be the combination

6 of the group that is important, and to not ignore

7 the fact that now the lines are very blurred in

8 terms of how much drug discovery and development is

9 being done in the public sector compared to even

10 five years ago. As most of you probably know, many

11 universities now have GMP facilities not just for

12 small molecules but also for biologics.

13 So I think the key to implementing the

14 Critical Path Initiative is going to be to try to

15 figure out how the public and private sector can

16 actually work better together.

17 If one had to prioritize tools that would

18 be most helpful for development of new antibiotics

19 or new antivirals and new vaccines, I have given

20 this a lot of thought and have had a lot of

21 conversations with people. I think most of us

22 would agree that we would probably put at the top

at 231

1 of the list more emphasis on systems biology to use

2 to determine and predict the interaction of the

3 different targets.

4 Ken, my response to you in terms of the

5 genomics approach and why we feel like we are empty

6 handed is because I think we really didn\'t

7 appreciate how interactive these new targets were

8 going to be. Now we have the ability to develop

9 inhibitors not just for a single enzyme in a given

10 pathway but actually to develop inhibitors, and in

11 some cases multiple inhibitors, for an entire

12 network.

13 Some of the most exciting work being done

14 in the public sector in terms of new antibiotic

15 discovery, as a result of the \$1.7 billion

16 increase in funding for NIH to focus on development

17 on new antibiotics and new antivirals, is exactly

18 this approach and that is a systems-biology

19 approach.

20 The other thing that I would say I would

21 put at the top of the list is the systems-biology

22 approach, particular that used by Lee Hood and

at 232

1 members of the Systems Biology Institute in Seattle

2 to try to better predict toxicology and efficacy.

3 I think this is where your public-private

4 interactions and the public-private partnerships

5 that are beginning to be established will be very

6 useful.

7 There is an extremely important piece of

8 legislation that was passed in December of this

9 year in the DoD appropriations. That was to allow

10 the establishment of what we call another

11 transaction authority which actually facilitates

12 establishment of consortia of different companies

13 and also public institutions getting around

14 antitrust issues to do exactly the kind of things

15 that, Ken, you were referring to.

16 Last week in London, I learned, in fact,

17 there is a Brain Initiative there where, in fact,

18 multiple companies are getting together to try to

19 address some of the nonproprietary issues that are

20 bottlenecks as far as drug discovery and

21 development. The MRC is very interested, as the

22 Wellcome Trust, in finding translation research.

at 233

1 But, again, it is the public-private partnership

2 that has people most excited.

3 I think other priorities would have to

4 rest with manufacturing and improved manufacturing,

5 particularly as it might relate to use of natural

6 products for development of new antibiotics and

7 also management of clinical data. The one think, I

8 think, I would like to have seen more of in the

9 Critical Path Initiative is more on the need for IT

10 infrastructure and innovation in IT as it relates

11 to collection and management and analysis of

12 clinical data, and knowledge-management data-mining

13 tools that could be developed.

14 Then the last thing I would just emphasize

15 is that I had a chance to review your slides, Dr.

16 Goodman, that you are going to speaking about this

17 afternoon and would be very supportive of the

18 efforts\--all efforts\--that we can put forth with

19 regards to development of tools for screening for

20 adventitious agents and biologics as well as other

21 products because I think this is a huge looming

22 potential crisis that we need to be addressing.

at 234

1 I would like to lastly say, and I think I

2 am going to end five minutes early, Ken, that the

3 American Society for Microbiology that has over

4 42,000 members who are very concerned about the

5 crisis that we have in vaccines and antibiotics. I

6 chair the Public and Scientific Affairs Board for

7 ASM. We are in the process of establishing a task

8 force to establish priorities and opportunities.

9 The one question that I would have for FDA

10 would be, in thinking about the next steps, what,

11 then, do we do with those priorities and could we

12 talk more specifically about who will be

13 responsible for what.

14 I think you know I have the same questions

15 that were posed earlier by Sue, and it is one of

16 resources. How can we help empower FDA to play a

17 leadership role because I think it is FDA\'s role to

18 do that.

19 The other thing I would encourage is that,

20 with the new centers, Research Centers of

21 Excellence, that have been established by NIH with

22 this increased funding, whose primary emphasis is

at 235

1 on development of new antivirals, vaccines and

2 antimicrobials, is that there be very close

3 interactions between those RCEs and FDA from the

4 very outset and, also, hopefully very close

5 interaction with the new product-development PPPs

6 to facilitate that process as much as possible

7 because I think there are a lot of opportunities.

8 Lastly, with regards to development of

9 countermeasures for bioterrorism, having in place

10 the Animal Rule which, if you are not familiar

11 with, maybe there will be time in discussion to

12 bring that up. But I think it will force all of us

13 to take a new approach as we think about

14 development of new antibiotics, new antivirals and

15 vaccines and what the limitations are or are not

16 when, in fact, you don\'t have the ability to test

17 efficacy in humans.

18 So thank you.

19 DR. SHINE: Gail, thank you very much. I

20 think most of us, if not all of us, recognize that

21 a number of the issues which are laid out in the

22 critical path are critical in antibiotics areas as

at 236

1 well as others. But, as I hear you talking, the

2 rate-limiting step still seems to be a fundamental

3 science issue; that is, it sounds as if it

4 is\--whether you call it systems biology or looking

5 at interactions, and so forth. Is that a

6 misinterpretation?

7 DR. CASSELL: No; I don\'t think so, Ken.

8 I just would say that, again, going back to that

9 public pressure that was placed on the industry in

10 the early 90\'s when we first had the

11 vancomycin-resistant enterococci and the historic

12 meeting at the Rockefeller, the OTA report, the ASM

13 Task Force on Antimicrobial Resistance, the

14 establishment of the Interagency Committee and Task

15 Force on Antimicrobial Resistance, companies did

16 begin to invest tremendously in the development of

17 new antibiotics using the best of the latest tools,

18 genomics\--I mean, in infectious diseases, we have

19 long been using proteomics and have the ability to

20 do that.

21 I can tell you that at least one company

22 that I am aware of, over a hundred high-throughput

at 237

1 screens using intact organisms, pathway screens, as

2 well as enzyme screens\--you know, people have come

3 up empty-handed. So I think that it is not

4 necessarily the systems biology or the need for

5 targets. I think that would be\--certainly, it is

6 going to help but I think, in honesty, I believe it

7 has to do with chemical diversity and the fact that

8 maybe, because most companies moved out of the

9 natural-product area, might be one factor.

10 But, there again, it goes back to the

11 tools. Natural products are much more expensive in

12 terms of cost of production but also just in terms

13 of development and also side effects in many cases.

14 There are a lot of people looking at the reasons

15 why, in fact, we have not had any more success in

16 developing new classes of antibiotics, who, I am

17 sure, know that in forty years of intensive effort,

18 there have only been two new classes.

19 So why is that? Is it because all the

20 low-hanging fruit has been picked? Or maybe there

21 are no more. I don\'t know. But, at any rate, I

22 can tell you that one other really exciting thing

at 238

1 is going on right now and that is the response to

2 the Gates Global Health Challenges. A lot of those

3 applications deal with drug development discovery.

4 Gates is very committed to helping, in terms of

5 drug development.

6 Again, I just close by saying I am

7 optimistic that people are taking a completely

8 fresh look at how we are doing business; in fact,

9 in the area of anti-infectives, maybe where we do

10 come up with a new paradigm for drug development.

11 DR. SHINE: We need to load Rob\'s slides,

12 so we have got a couple of minutes. Do other

13 people want to raise questions for Gail?

14 DR. THOMAS: I have got a question. I

15 would certainly like to echo the importance of

16 systems biology. We have gotten to a point in our

17 training programs now that our young people are

18 coming out of the very advanced universities and

19 they have such a niche in research, you can\'t find

20 a pharmacologist or toxicologist that has ever

21 dealt with a whole animal. So you are talking

22 about systems research. We need to go back and

at 239

1 train some of these people.

2 DR. CASSELL: I chair the Board of

3 Directors for the Burroughs Wellcome and I am

4 pleased to see that we have one of our

5 distinguished investigators here on the Science

6 Board. We actually have taken a very close look at

7 a lot of issues related to translational research.

8 You know, Burroughs Wellcome Fund has really played

9 a lead role, I think, in funding investigators in

10 this field.

11 We had Marv Cassman come to our last Board

12 meeting, the former Director of NIGMS at the NIH.

13 I heard something I thought I would never hear Marv

14 say. He said, \"The two things that are the biggest

15 bottlenecks are the lack of people trained in

16 integrative biology, systems biology, and microbial

17 physiology,\" which we have been trying to convince

18 him of for twenty years. But I think you are

19 absolutely right about that.

20 DR. THOMAS: The other comment is when you

21 look at\--again, going back to the critical path and

22 list of priorities, heretofore, we have never had

at 240

1 this globalization concept to deal with and yet it

2 has been really reinforced with the various viruses

3 that we are now dealing with.

4 Two or three decades ago, the U.S.

5 Military of Operations was interested in selected

6 infected disease around the world. Now, that is

7 all out the window. We have got to think globally

8 in our whole list of priorities and not just focus

9 on what is a major disease in the United States.

10 DR. CASSELL: I am glad you reminded me

11 because one of the other things that I hope maybe

12 Dr. Goodman will address is the need to rapidly

13 speed up our ability to develop new vaccines and

14 antivirals and, perhaps, broad spectrum antivirals

15 which, I think, the systems-biology approach would

16 allow us to better do using both the human genome

17 and the infectious-agent genomes.

18 But when you have got something like SARS,

19 or the bird flu, or potentially new strains of

20 influenza, we need to fast-forward anything we can

21 in terms of development and approval. I don\'t

22 know, Jesse, if you plan to talk about this, but

at 241

1 John LaMontaigne has been filling my ear full about

2 the need, as far as speeding up the process.

3 DR. SHINE: Gail. Thank you very, very

4 much. Hopefully, we will have a chance, at the end

5 of these presentations, to revisit some of these

6 questions.

7 I want to thank Rob Califf, who just flew

8 in. Those of you who know Rob know that he is

9 probably the nation\'s leader in terms of academic

10 involvement in clinical trials and evaluation of

11 drugs and has a particularly important perspective.

12 Rob, we are particularly interested in

13 your comments in the area of chronic diseases where

14 the elements in the path that Janet has emphasized

15 are critical. How do you see not just the

16 fundamental science but getting it through that

17 path and how we should be thinking about FDA

18 initiatives in that area?

19 Perspective on Chronic Disease Therapies

20 DR. CALIFF: Thanks, Ken. It is great to

21 be here. Actually, I wish we would hurry up with

22 the antibiotics. I am running a CCU today and now

at 242

1 that we are putting devices in everybody, they are

2 all infected, and the old antibiotics don\'t work

3 very well when they get infected with devices in.

4 \[Slide.\]

5 But this is actually from, Gail, your

6 talk. This is a perfect handoff. I am going to

7 stress, if we don\'t cut the transaction costs of

8 the public-private partnership, we are not going to

9 solve these problems. It is also not just

10 fundamental science. I am going to talk about what

11 I see as the blocks in the other areas.

12 \[Slide.\]

13 So the key points are that chronic disease

14 is the dominant health issue. I think predicting

15 whether chronic-disease therapy causes a net

16 benefit or harm is extremely difficult and the

17 difficulty of this is typically underestimated by

18 almost everybody involved.

19 We all agree, I think, biomarkers and

20 imaging are the way to go. But, really, mostly is

21 a screen which I think the document emphasizes and

22 I really do not believe that this can substitute

at 243

1 for clinical outcomes in most circumstances. Then,

2 finally, there is tremendous inefficiency in

3 clinical trials.

4 I am just going to make these points with

5 a series of slides very quickly. I will go through

6 the slides quickly.

7 \[Slide.\]

8 The average life expectancy for women in

9 our society on the left, 90, almost. Over 80 for

10 men. So these problems\--I am not lamenting these

11 problems to have but, if you go to any hospital in

12 the U.S. today, you are going to find it full of

13 people over age 70 many of whom are quite

14 functional with a variety of chronic and acute

15 illnesses.

16 \[Slide.\]

17 The dominant forms of illness from the

18 World Health Organization in developed countries

19 and, increasingly in developing countries, are the

20 same old plugged up blood vessels and sequelae of

21 smoking, et cetera, chronic illness.

22 \[Slide.\]

at 244

1 Disability is dropping dramatically,

2 probably due to better medical care. Actually,

3 disability is dropping faster age-adjusted than

4 longevity is increasing, and longevity is

5 increasing very nicely.

6 \[Slide.\]

7 The consequences of this, Dr. Zahooney\[?\]

8 shows over and over. A lot of people forget that

9 we are at this phase right now where we have had a

10 relatively flat portion of this curve but we are

11 just hitting the upstroke. People in specialty

12 practice in the U.S. are feeling this incredibly

13 dramatically right now. There is an unbelievable

14 shortage of cardiologists, oncologists,

15 nephrologists, all the people dealing\--and it is

16 not that we are finding patients that we didn\'t

17 have before. It is just that we are in this

18 beginning phase of the elderly group.

19 \[Slide.\]

20 This is going to impact things in ways we

21 haven\'t imagined. I don\'t think most people have

22 come to grips with this slide yet.

at 245

1 \[Slide.\]

2 Mr. Greenspan made the point about a month

3 ago. I felt like he was finally coming clean about

4 this, but this is probably about halfway clean as

5 far as I can tell in terms of the situation that we

6 are in.

7 \[Slide.\]

8 It is going to be driven even harder by

9 the people that we are dealing\--my average

10 75-year-old clinic patient is a lot different today

11 than twenty years ago in a lot of ways.

12 \[Slide.\]

13 We also have this phenomenon that people

14 tend to forget on the product-development side, and

15 that is we are increasingly sophisticated in

16 measuring whether what is being given to people

17 actually does anything worthwhile. It is happening

18 well in the postmarketing phase and I think will

19 increasingly happen in the postmarketing phase. It

20 still is interesting that they would see on medical

21 students, as I did today, who have been through

22 several years of basic science and then show up

at 246

1 imagining that what they have heard about in basic

2 science is going to have these dramatic results in

3 clinical outcomes. We are talking about 10 percent

4 reductions in events with most of the things that

5 we do.

6 \[Slide.\]

7 This is leading to a view well beyond

8 product development by those paying for medical

9 care that we can actually begin to measure this.

10 This year is the big year. I don\'t know whether to

11 be glad or sad that cardiology is leading the way

12 here in that we now feel like, for our big

13 diseases, heart failure and acute coronary

14 syndromes in the hospital, we have got about ten

15 things for each of those that we all agree on that

16 ought to be done routinely and as a standard of

17 care.

18 This year, Medicare is paying us

19 differently based on whether we do those ten things

20 and rewarding hospitals if they post that

21 information on the internet for everyone to look

22 at. This is a big change and, if you think about

at 247

1 product development and what may drive it in the

2 future, if you don\'t get into this category of

3 being a performance indicator, it is going to be

4 hard to get your product paid for. That is the way

5 it is going to be driven.

6 \[Slide.\]

7 We have looked at what it takes to find

8 out if things work. My conclusion, unfortunately,

9 is that there are no shortcuts. This is a whole

10 list of reasons. I am not going to dwell on them.

11 I left references. The slides will be posted. I

12 did send them by e-mail yesterday, but I don\'t

13 think you got them. There are a whole variety of

14 reasons for this.

15 \[Slide.\]

16 I am going to just show you examples of a

17 couple. Most of what we do has a very small

18 effect. This is a slide that changed my career

19 when it was published. I thought I could develop

20 great new treatments for heart attack, the leading

21 cause of death and disability in our society. The

22 bottom line is the best thing we have would take

at 248

1 6,000 to 10,000 patients to tell the difference.

2 In fact, we are just starting a trial of what we

3 think may be a great new therapy. 8,000 patients

4 is what it is going to take. It takes a global

5 study. If you do anything short of that, you don\'t

6 really know.

7 \[Slide.\]

8 Things that we think ought to work based

9 on surrogates sometimes not only don\'t work, they

10 kill people. The preeminent example, of course, is

11 antiarrhythmic drugs and the CAST study.

12 \[Slide.\]

13 But we can take the entire field of heart

14 failure. On average, if you are enrolled in a

15 Phase III trial in heart failure, you would be

16 better off getting placebo, not only for being

17 alive but also for quality of life. None of these

18 were developed in the absence of biomarkers and

19 arrays of biomarkers and lately even transgenic

20 models showing you can reverse the condition in a

21 transgenic-mouse model. That is the case of the

22 TNF-alpha inhibitors.

at 249

1 \[Slide.\]

2 So the simple-minded notion that you can

3 measure a few biomarkers and assure the public that

4 you know that you are giving them something that is

5 good for them, I think, is largely discredited.

6 \[Slide.\]

7 The reason is remarkably simple and

8 published in the Annals of Internal Medicine over a

9 decade ago by DeMets and Fleming who have been in

10 this position over the years to watch the hosts of

11 people coming through with their great treatments

12 and to do the statistics on them, clinical trials

13 and watch the disappointment or the elation that

14 occurs at the end of it.

15 In a simple world, all diseases would work

16 through a linear mechanism and we would be able to

17 intervene on the surrogate and be assured that we

18 would have an effect on the true clinical outcome.

19 \[Slide.\]

20 But, unfortunately, and I think Dale did a

21 good job of describing it, not only is it not

22 linear. I mean, in the simple case I gave, there

at 250

1 are just two things going on. One is the surrogate

2 pathway that you know about. The other is some

3 other pathway of the disease that you didn\'t know

4 about. So you have an incomplete effect or you may

5 not only affect the surrogate but actually have a

6 direct effect on the true outcome that could be

7 good or bad that you didn\'t think about measuring.

8 Or you could affect all three at the same time.

9 \[Slide.\]

10 All this, frankly, is unpredictable and

11 leads to this situation with every treatment we

12 give. Even the things we are absolutely sure

13 work\--we have had a rash of left-main disease on

14 our CCU. It is like the 1980s again. I am not

15 sure why. We know surgery is beneficial but you

16 are telling people, you have got a 3 percent chance

17 of being dead tomorrow if we do the surgery. It is

18 a mixture of good and bad.

19 I haven\'t seen much come out of giving

20 drugs to entire people, every cell in their body

21 that is any more predictable than that.

22 \[Slide.\]

at 251

1 The king of biomarkers in cardiology today

2 is troponin which, in the course of the decade, has

3 gone from being unknown to being a standard of care

4 measured in 99.8 percent of American hospitals.

5 \[Slide.\]

6 It stratifies prognosis. I am going to

7 come back to it in just a minute. The problem with

8 the biomarkers is that it is not enough to have

9 something that predicts out come. You have also

10 got to show that it predicts the effect of the

11 treatment. Specifically, if we say it segregates a

12 population where the treatment effect is greater,

13 you now have got a subgroup problem. So I am going

14 to make a little fun of the FDA but it is really

15 making fun of all of us.

16 We had a great example a couple of years

17 ago, the Val-HeFT trial. It is sort of what I call

18 a typical beneficial chronic-disease effect, about

19 a 13 percent reduction in the setting of heart

20 failure in the composite of death and

21 rehospitalization.

22 \[Slide.\]

at 252

1 As we all do, we looked at all the

2 subgroups and, lo and behold, when we looked at

3 them, patients who were not taking an ACE

4 inhibitor, as you would expect, got a tremendous

5 benefit from the angiotensin-receptor blocker. But

6 if the patients were on a beta blocker already, it

7 wasn\'t quite so pretty and, in fact, when we looked

8 at patients who were on ACE inhibitor and beta

9 blocker together, there was actually a 42 percent

10 increase in the risk of death.

11 This looked very convincing. The p-values

12 are very small by old criteria. It was post hoc.

13 But how could you ignore it?

14 \[Slide.\]

15 So, in fact, the labeling was written. It

16 was actually fairly careful labeling\--I did verify

17 just for you all this morning that still there are

18 no doctors who read any labels so don\'t really

19 worry about it very much\--but not recommend a

20 concomitant use of ACE inhibitor and beta blocker.

21 Actually, that by itself is not necessarily bad

22 advice but the implication here, taken by most of

at 253

1 cardiology, was it made sense because if you block

2 both the renin angiotension system three ways, beta

3 blockers, ACE inhibitors and ARVs, it has got to be

4 too much and it has got to be bad.

5 We have not done three clinical trials

6 that have totally refuted this as being a bad

7 thing. It is just not the case. It was play of

8 chance, a subgroup finding.

9 \[Slide.\]

10 So this brings us back to the Richard Peto

11 quote. You could put false positives here just as

12 well, but the fact is, as you may remember, back in

13 ISIS 2, if you were Gemini or Libra, you got no

14 benefit from aspirin. If you had the other

15 astrological signs, you got a tremendous benefit.

16 The point I want to make with regard to

17 biomarkers, as we get into the era of protemoics

18 and metabolomics, is that, if we do enough studies,

19 we will be able to replicate the findings. We have

20 actually replicated this finding now in SYMPHONY 2

21 where exactly the same astrological signs have the

22 same effect. It is now submitted for publication

at 254

1 just as an example.

2 \[Slide.\]

3 But not only that, if we have too few

4 outcomes, we can get results that used to be

5 considered definitive. You would never ethically

6 repeat the experiment. In heart failure, we repeat

7 the experiment and we get results that are

8 sometimes negative and sometimes worse and several

9 detrimental therapies have been kept from the

10 market or taken off early because of the courage of

11 people to go ahead and do the experiment again.

12 \[Slide.\]

13 So all this is magnified. The subgroup

14 problem is magnified now that we can measure

15 multiple biomarkers. So here is BNP and troponin T

16 together.

17 \[Slide.\]

18 Here is BNP and CRP. You see in these

19 plots that if you got badness in both of them, it

20 is really bad, goodness in both of them, it is

21 really good.

22 \[Slide.\]

at 255

1 BNP and creatinine clearance.

2 \[Slide.\]

3 Troponin T and CRP. So you begin to get

4 ten factorial biomarkers all of which add a little

5 bit and you divide that into the ten factorial

6 subgroups, you have got an enormous mathematical

7 problem.

8 \[Slide.\]

9 My dean and chancellor are making it more

10 difficult by predicting that we are going to put

11 this together with images and genomic data and

12 somehow you will get a printout that will tell you

13 what to do with your patient. Well, I think this

14 is just an enormous mathematical problem.

15 \[Slide.\]

16 So Point No. 1 is biomarkers and imaging

17 are the way to go. It is well laid out in the

18 document. I think it is critical. But it only

19 should be used for screening. And not in my slide

20 is that I think this is only going to work through

21 a public-private partnership. There is not a

22 company on the face of the earth as big, Allen, as

at 256

1 you may be that can do enough of the negative

2 experiments to find out what the array of

3 biomarkers is that predicts a beneficial treatment

4 over time, or even toxicity.

5 It is especially bad if the experiments

6 are secret. The companies are not releasing their

7 negative data. This is creating an enormous

8 problem. Many of us that make good money

9 consulting with companies do it because the

10 companies call and say, we have got this problem

11 with a biomarker. What have you seen with the

12 other companies? You can\'t tell us exactly what

13 you saw but you might have some experience because

14 it is not being shared across the industry.

15 I think unleashing this on the public

16 without further study of true outcomes is an

17 enormous game of Russian roulette in chronic

18 therapies.

19 \[Slide.\]

20 Last point; we waste a lot of money on

21 clinical trials completely unnecessarily. There

22 seems to be a myth, and I don\'t know where it came

at 257

1 from, that the industry has figured out how to do

2 clinical trials efficiently. This is not the case.

3 A huge amount of money is being spent and mostly

4 because of the tremendous risk aversion. I think

5 there are very simple things the FDA could do if

6 there was a carrot added to the simple things that

7 would cause industry to change its behavior.

8 \[Slide.\]

9 We did a little study\--this is in press in

10 American Heart Journal\--where we took the

11 information, we created hypothetical clinical

12 trials and asked them how they spend their money

13 and what might be done to change it using some

14 pricing models.

15 Interestingly, there aren\'t any medical

16 journals interested in this. I am the Editor of

17 American Heart Journal. That is why it is

18 published there.

19 \[Slide.\]

20 But, if you take an average heart-failure

21 trial, now, you are talking about \$142 million; an

22 average acute-coronary-syndromes trial, \$83 million

at 258

1 being spent. You can see the breakdown of how the

2 money is spent. Most of the money is going to

3 collect data that is never used for anything and to

4 fly people all over the world checking the data

5 that is not going to be used for anything to make

6 sure that it matches a medical record which, in and

7 of itself, is inaccurate. It is really quite

8 remarkable.

9 What is also interesting about the

10 dynamics of the cost here is that when you begin to

11 cut down on some of this nonsense, it has an effect

12 on all segments. So, if you collect less data, you

13 need less monitoring. If you require less

14 monitoring, you spend less money paying the sites

15 because they don\'t have to spend a lot of money to

16 deal with the monitors. You can read this on your

17 own.

18 \[Slide.\]

19 What is really fascinating about this to

20 me is that there is nobody studying how to do this

21 and, in fact, trying to get the industry to talk

22 about it is almost impossible because they are

at 259

1 scared to death that, if the question comes up that

2 it might be imperfect, that somehow it will hold up

3 an application.

4 We have a case right now, something that

5 is being reviewed by the FDA. We had some very

6 creative people who wanted to study learning-curve

7 phenomenon which is a huge issue in medicine now.

8 It is no surprise, when you do a big clinical

9 trial, the first hundred patients, there are a lot

10 of mistakes made. But the company has blocked us

11 from sending this in in a timely fashion until the

12 FDA review is over because they are afraid that the

13 FDA might look at this and raise questions about

14 the study.

15 \[Slide.\]

16 So we need people studying this. If you

17 don\'t believe this is a problem, I would just

18 remind you, my defense always now is HRT.

19 \[Slide.\]

20 And remarkable consistency in the clinical

21 trials we are seeing between WHI and HERS.

22 \[Slide.\]

at 260

1 But I think the lesson here is that we

2 focused on the biomarkers that look good and we

3 forgot that there are at least 20 biomarkers we

4 know of now. In our latest finding, which I am

5 really excited about, is that HRT improves

6 availability of vascular progenitor cells. So the

7 hottest thing in cardiology, HRT is good for.

8 Unfortunately, when you give it to people

9 chronically, it doesn\'t do good because there are

10 other offsetting effects.

11 So the bottom line here is I think

12 biomarkers are good but we better work out

13 public-private partnership arrangements that

14 facilitate the sharing of the information and we

15 should really take clinical trials seriously as an

16 enterprise that requires study on how to do it

17 better and more efficiently.

18 Dennis Gillings and I probably only agree

19 on one thing and that is that we could reduce the

20 cost of clinical trials by 50 percent and actually

21 have better data at the end than we currently have.

22 So I will stop there. I think I was on

at 261

1 time.

2 DR. SHINE: Terrific. Thank you very

3 much. Lots of provocative content. Questions from

4 the committee? We have got a couple of minutes

5 here before we go to our next speaker.

6 You have identified, in terms of getting

7 drug to where it will do the most good. I have

8 identified concerns about biomarkers. You have

9 talked about the design and expense of clinical

10 trials. From your perspective, in terms of the

11 products that you have been involved in, trying to

12 see them move through the pipeline, and given

13 Janet\'s notion about trying to develop science that

14 would accelerate safety which would accelerate

15 utility which would look at industrialization,

16 could you give us an idea as to where you think

17 that science ought to go?

18 Obviously, the drug trial is a big part of

19 the utility story and so are biomarkers, but I am

20 just curious as to whether you have thoughts about

21 areas where you would like to see additional

22 science underpinning that process.

at 262

1 DR. CALIFF: It depends on your

2 definition. Let me just talk about two aspects of

3 science. I think the issues of the underlying

4 science of cellular networks, proteomics, that is

5 very well described by a lot of people and I think

6 it is going to move forward. We have got to figure

7 out how to get the NIH better integrated into the

8 rest of the world. There is a lot of work going on

9 that I think you all know about.

10 But there is also the industrial science

11 of studying what you do. It is a funny business to

12 me that we do this quantitative stuff and no one is

13 studying how to do it better. I am sure every big

14 pharmaceutical company has people that are

15 studying, most consultants, by the way. But there

16 is no national enterprise to study how to do

17 clinical research better and a lot of it can be

18 empirically studied, I believe.

19 We make rules and regulations based on

20 somebody\'s opinion. We never study whether they

21 make things better or worse.

22 We took a poll of our investigators last

at 263

1 week and 80 percent say that their lives has been

2 made more difficult. The majority say they are

3 considering stopping doing clinical research in

4 this country because the transactions have become

5 so complicated and difficult, the cost is

6 skyrocketing and they are not being reimbursed.

7 Every other industry studies itself to

8 make itself more efficient, but not this one.

9 DR. SHINE: We talked a little bit before

10 you came about the semi-conductor industry,

11 SemiTech and a variety of those models. We want to

12 come back to them.

13 Rob, are you going to be able to stay for

14 a little bit?

15 DR. CALIFF: I have got to go back. I am

16 on call today.

17 DR. SHINE: Any other questions for Rob

18 before he leaves, then? Xavier?

19 DR. PI-SUNYER: Dr. Califf, I don\'t

20 know\--were you here during Dr. Woodcock\'s

21 presentation?

22 DR. CALIFF: No, but I have talked with

at 264

1 Janet quite a bit and she showed me her slides.

2 DR. PI-SUNYER: What you have said about

3 surrogate markers really goes quite against, I

4 think, what she said earlier about trying to

5 develop these further. You are very skeptical.

6 DR. CALIFF: Let\'s see if we disagree. I

7 think surrogate markers need to be used for

8 screening. Out of the, hopefully, hundreds of

9 things to come from proteomics, for example, and

10 with proteomic arrays, to pick the things to really

11 try to go the distance with. I don\'t know of any

12 other way of doing it. I think it is the

13 right\--and imaging, which she may not have talked

14 about as much, I think is equally as important.

15 It is a political issue, largely, as to

16 when you let things on the market and then how you

17 follow up and make sure you really know at what

18 level you do. For a chronic disease, you may not

19 be able to wait until you really know. An example

20 I used that Larry Kessler and I had several

21 meetings about would be cardiac valves. You can\'t

22 wait the eighteen years to know if a cardiac valve

at 265

1 is really safe to put it on the market.

2 That is not right, but you sure better

3 study it. And we have examples of that.

4 DR. SHINE: I want Janet to comment. But

5 what I heard was something a little different.

6 What I heard was a skepticism that final decisions

7 about products that rest only on surrogate markers

8 is dangerous, that surrogate markers for screening

9 makes sense if they are appropriately set up and

10 that maybe surrogate markers, CD4s, viral load in

11 HIV or whatever, which have a high degree of

12 prediction of the outcome, but, until you have

13 predicted the outcome with the surrogate marker,

14 you want to be very cautious about how far that is

15 taken down the\--

16 DR. CALIFF: Let me say one more sentence

17 based on what\--if you say \"final,\" yes; I am

18 adamant and even CD4. Talk to Tom Fleming about

19 CD4 now. Yes; it is a good way to know that a drug

20 will have an effect. But if you make rounds with a

21 doctor now, you are talking about dozens of drugs

22 and it doesn\'t distinguish which\--a CD4 count, in

at 266

1 the short term, doesn\'t tell you, for HIV, which is

2 now a chronic disease, which one is going to give

3 you better outcomes in the long term.

4 DR. SHINE: Janet?

5 DR. WOODCOCK: I think there is a

6 spectrum. I made a distinction between the

7 predictive, the need for better prediction, which

8 is driving a lot of the costs. We need to be able

9 to identify, as Gail said, viable candidates and

10 move them along versus confirmation, which I think

11 is what Rob is talking about.

12 Both of us talked, I think, about society

13 has a need for certainty. Rob said it better, I

14 think. It isn\'t just the FDA. The payers,

15 everybody, people who take the drugs, they want to

16 know they are going to work. So I don\'t totally

17 agree with Rob. I think there are other areas\--I

18 think he is influenced by cardiology. I think

19 there are other areas, my field, for example, where

20 you have very good certainty with a surrogate and

21 they have been very successful.

22 DR. CALIFF: What field is that?

at 267

1 DR. WOODCOCK: I am a rheumatologist.

2 DR. CALIFF: Let\'s talk about COX2

3 inhibitors, just another paper in Circulation about

4 a higher MI rate.

5 DR. WOODCOCK: Yes; but that is a side

6 effect. We agree there are side effects.

7 DR. CALIFF: Bob Temple is probably going

8 to talk about this. We will probably agree more

9 than\--

10 DR. WOODCOCK: Can I just say one more

11 thing, not on the biomarker issue, but I think the

12 issue Rob has raised about the academic base of

13 clinical trials and how we do clinical trials is an

14 extremely important point. I tried to make that

15 point as well, probably not as well, again, as he

16 did, but it is an extremely important point because

17 that is the enterprise that you are involved in

18 once you get into people.

19 We don\'t study it. We wouldn\'t build

20 bridges if we didn\'t have engineering schools or

21 they wouldn\'t be very successful bridges, at least.

22 And that, I think, is the situation we are in.

at 268

1 That is also science. It is not regulatory. If

2 you are just making a regulatory standard without a

3 science base, again, you are not making the most

4 informed recommendation on what should be done.

5 That is the problem.

6 DR. SHINE: Thank you very much, Rob.

7 Thank you for whipping up here and have a safe trip

8 back.

9 DR. CALIFF: Thank you. I would love to

10 argue about this more.

11 DR. SHINE: Good. I would, too.

12 Our next speaker is Robert S. Langer, Bob

13 Langer, from MIT. Bob is an extraordinarily

14 distinguished scientist, one of, I think, a

15 relatively small number of people who are members

16 of the National Academy of Sciences, the National

17 Academy of Engineering and the Institute of

18 Medicine which reflects, I think, the extraordinary

19 breadth of his contributions. He is going to talk

20 about the critical path as it relates to drug

21 formulation and development and tissue-engineering

22 issues.

at 269

1 Bob, thank you very much for coming down

2 for this purpose. We are particularly interested

3 in this interface from your perspective.

4 Drug Formulation and Development

5 and Tissue Engineering Issues.

6 DR. LANGER: Thank you very much.

7 Actually, I was going to say, Ken, that probably

8 all three of those, I was probably that rare

9 instance where all three of those organizations

10 made a big mistake.

11 DR. SHINE: Don\'t you believe it.

12 DR. LANGER: I wasn\'t sure exactly what

13 the best thing would be to do. I had the pleasure

14 of talking with both Janet and David and others in

15 preparation for this. So I kind of actually broke

16 this talk up into two parts.

17 \[Slide.\]

18 Basically, the first half of the talk, I

19 wanted to talk about areas where new development

20 tools, which was kind of the theme of the report,

21 might accelerate progress. I deliberately tried to

22 pick things that were not in the report because I

at 270

1 thought that that might be more helpful. Also, I

2 have tried to pick things that I think may aid in

3 some of the things that are going on, if you look

4 at it from a more generic perspective. Hopefully,

5 that will be clear.

6 The two I picked were formulation and

7 glycosylation.

8 \[Slide.\]

9 The second area that I will end the talk

10 with are sort of new areas that are coming down the

11 pike. These would be areas that are new

12 technologies that people have heard about it, but

13 there really have been very few, if any, products

14 that have been approved yet. So these are going to

15 be areas where I think we will all need to think

16 about it even further. Really, my talk here is, at

17 best, an introduction to what we might think about.

18 I picked nanotechnology and tissue

19 engineering based on my conversations.

20 Let me just start out with formulation.

21 Part of the reason I picked this is because I

22 wanted to pick something I knew a little bit about.

at 271

1 The area that I have worked on for many years has

2 been drug-delivery systems. But one of the things

3 that I noticed as I have gotten into that field\--I

4 probably also had the pleasure of consulting with

5 just about every pharmaceutical company in the

6 world. One of the things that you

7 notice when you do this is that formulation is sort

8 of the lowest rung on the totem pole. It comes

9 last. That has actually created huge problems.

10 When you go to some of the really top companies in

11 the world, what you see is that a drug might have

12 fantastic effects and cells and things like that,

13 but they can\'t formulate it. They can\'t make it

14 soluble. It happens, actually, 40 or 50 percent of

15 the time. You can\'t get it in the right crystal

16 structure.

17 What you see is companies literally

18 spending years, many years, sometimes decades

19 trying to figure out whether to kill the project or

20 to solve it. Really, what you see largely is

21 people working by hand in the laboratory trying to

22 solve it.

at 272

1 A couple of years ago, and part of this is

2 companies that I have been involved with\--a couple

3 of years I was talking to some people about this

4 and we decided to try to create a company to help

5 this.

6 \[Slide.\]

7 In fact, the person who is leading the

8 effort there is\--the company is TransForm, but the

9 man who is leading the effort, actually,

10 scientifically is a many named Colin Gardner who

11 used to be worldwide Vice President of

12 Pharmaceutical R&D an Merck. He would see this

13 problem over and over again and wanted to see if we

14 could make an impact.

15 I will sort of try to highlight a little

16 bit about what they have tried to do. This is kind

17 of just a summary and then I am going to show you a

18 video to give you the idea of high throughput.

19 Basically, the idea is generally,

20 traditionally, what would happen is they call it

21 form and formulation. Basically, that is making

22 drugs in new crystal structures or making them more

at 273

1 soluble, things like that. Normally, you might do

2 ten or twenty in one of two months. What they are

3 doing, because of what I will show you, high

4 throughput, now they are able to do up to 20,000 in

5 two to four weeks.

6 They also are using tools that have been

7 talked about in the report, the FDA report, like

8 informatics, so that, once you do this 20,000, you

9 can go back into the next 20,000 and do a lot

10 better. These kinds of tools are being used in

11 genomics but they really haven\'t been used in

12 certain other areas.

13 So that is basically the idea. Basically,

14 what I thought I would try to do now, and this is

15 going to go very fast, so it is going to give you a

16 video of what they are doing. Part of why I wanted

17 to show it to you is maybe people could also use

18 their imaginations.

19 See, here, we are applying to formulation

20 but one of the things you might ask is could you

21 apply this to other things that might also

22 accelerate the kinds of things we are talking

at 274

1 about.

2 So let me try to show you the video.

3 Basically, what you will be seeing, just

4 to give you an introduction, you kind of have all

5 these vials and they actually call them hotels with

6 different rooms. Each of them, what you will be

7 doing is trying to create a new crystal structure.

8 It is all done by robotics. The robots are going

9 to put these powders in. Then they have these

10 on-line systems that measure, like, X-ray

11 defraction for crystal structure or Raman

12 spectroscopy for crystal structure. You are going

13 to see real-time measurements.

14 Then they have informatics packages that

15 take all this stuff and then organize it. Then

16 they will look at it and say, how many crystals do

17 you have, what are their crystal structures, and so

18 forth.

19 So let me go to that video.

20 \[Video.\]

21 Here it is. This is illuminated. It is

22 all robotics. Like, you can see the vials going

at 275

1 in. You shine the light through it and you

2 get\--this is an X-ray defraction done on line.

3 They are putting it just in again by robotics. All

4 this is real time. They are looking at it. These

5 are all the Raman spectrographs, real-time. You

6 organize it. You get the idea of high throughput.

7 They then organize it. They bend the

8 data. This is the informatics. You see three

9 crystal structures here. Then you can take that

10 data and now you can organize it. This is a

11 slightly different way, but, again, you see three

12 crystal structures.

13 This last thing is just a way of having a

14 target. You could have a target of a certain

15 crystal structure or drug solubility. This just

16 shows, again, real data how they have improved each

17 time by using informatics package to go up and up.

18 Just to give you a couple of examples of

19 that. What they have done, actually, for Jim\'s

20 benefit, they have transformed\--this is all

21 public\--they have had a very close relationship

22 with Alza so they have been able to do, in a month,

at 276

1 the same number of transdermal experiments that

2 Alza had done in thirty years just because of using

3 these kinds of approaches.

4 \[Slide.\]

5 I thought a real practical example which

6 has been published and probably very relevant to

7 this audience is actually ritonavir. This is an

8 AIDS drug that Abbott made. People may know that

9 they made it 1.5 years after they launched

10 it\--well, it was originally in crystal Form 1. But

11 1.5 years after they launched it, it formed into a

12 new polymorph. So it was 50 percent less soluble

13 and they had to basically recall it and try to

14 reformulate it. Basically, they could never get it

15 back. They could never get it back to Form 1.

16 Somehow, it had been contaminated and, no matter

17 what they did, it would never get back.

18 But, again, using a high throughput

19 approach, and this was published in Proceedings of

20 the National Academy, in two weeks, basically, what

21 they were able to do is not only make Form 2 but

22 make Form 1 again, and make three new forms that

at 277

1 had never been discovered before.

2 So, basically, this is just one of quite a

3 number of ways of using high throughput to try to

4 aid discovery and, in my opinion, a very

5 underdeveloped area, formulation.

6 \[Slide.\]

7 The second area that I was going to go

8 onto was, when I read through the report, and,

9 again, my goal was to try to pick things that were

10 not so much mentioned, but some of the, I think,

11 exciting new tools that are coming along are

12 imaging, informatics, genomics and proteomics.

13 I thought I would pick a fifth one

14 because, I think, again, it is potentially very

15 important and very underdeveloped which is

16 glycomics, sugars. It is interesting. Whenever

17 somebody gives a protein, you know the sequence.

18 It is a pure molecule. But, if you think about it,

19 whenever you are giving a polysaccharide or a

20 glycoprotein, that part of it you are not.

21 In other words, if you took heparin, and I

22 will come back to this is a second, heparins

at 278

1 poly-disperse. All glycoproteins from a glyco part

2 are poly-dispersed. So, as people start to look

3 forward to maybe making bio-generics someday or

4 things like that, how do you ever know what you

5 have really got.

6 \[Slide.\]

7 So, anyhow, just to go over a little bit,

8 cracking the code of sugars, you could view in some

9 ways as being analogous to sequencing DNA.

10 Sequencing of DNA, obviously, led to a major

11 revolution but, like DNA and proteins, sugars also

12 can play very important roles. They exist as

13 sequences and building blocks similar to DNA but

14 here the sequencing has been a lot more complex, a

15 lot harder.

16 As I mention, it is important, I mean,

17 just to pick two drugs. One, it might be Lovenox,

18 which is a low-molecular heparin. Let\'s say one

19 wanted to make betters ones or generic ones.

20 Another example could be glycosylated proteins,

21 like epogen. So these are important areas.

22 \[Slide.\]

at 279

1 What\'s been done, then, or maybe just to

2 go over the problems, so there is an inherent

3 complexity of sugars. There has been structural

4 complexity and they are information-dense. There

5 haven\'t been ways to amplify them. There hasn\'t

6 been polymerized chain reaction, so to speak. And,

7 as I mentioned, a particular issue is that they are

8 heterogeneous. You don\'t give one heparin.

9 So the problem is lack of technology and

10 tools to sequence sugars so it has made it

11 difficult to characterize and engineer them and to

12 decipher their role in biology. This work was

13 actually, again, published in Science and being

14 developed by another company I have been involved

15 with called Momenta. Basically, it has been led by

16 Ram Sasisekharan and others.

17 But, in our lab, a number of years ago, we

18 were able to clone heparinase, heparinases, all

19 kinds of heparin-cleaving enzymes. What they have

20 done, and published in Science, is use these to

21 cleave specific portions of these molecules and

22 then use a vanity of techniques like mass spec,

at 280

1 capillary electrophoresis, NRM and basically have

2 coupled with an informatics package and basically

3 sequenced pretty much any kind of sugar.

4 So this kind of approach may some day, as

5 an example, may lead to being able to make better

6 polysaccharides, better glycoproteins and so forth

7 because now you might have the opportunity to know

8 what you are dealing with.

9 \[Slide.\]

10 So that is kind of what I wanted to go

11 over in the first part of the talk. The second

12 part of the talk is more raising questions rather

13 than even giving any suggestions for answers,

14 although I will try to do that just a little. But

15 two future areas I wanted to focus on in medical

16 development are nanotechnology and tissue

17 engineering.

18 Nanotechnology is a term that gets widely

19 used and has many different meanings. I thought I

20 would pick two examples, though, where I thought it

21 might be helpful to go over in medicine. One is

22 actually things, again, which came out of our lab

at 281

1 which are what I will call microelectromechanical

2 devices. These are what are called MEMs devices.

3 In particular, these are little microchips, but

4 what you are doing in these microchips is, if you

5 have potent medicines, you can make, and I will

6 show you some pictures in a second, little wells.

7 Unlike regular chips which are all

8 electrical, these chips you can put drugs in or

9 chemicals in. You can store them there

10 indefinitely. These wells are nano-sized wells.

11 They are very small but you can pack a good deal of

12 drug in them. The idea is that they could actually

13 in the body or in a patch or in a pill, but what

14 you can do, if you want, is you can\--and, again,

15 this is still in the animal-testing stage.

16 But, basically, all these little wells are

17 individually addressable. What you can do is the

18 drug will basically stay there, but if you just

19 apply one volt selectively, and you might do this

20 by telemetry, like the way you open up a garage

21 door. There are all kinds of electrical things you

22 can do. You can basically cause the gold to

at 282

1 dissolve.

2 We picked gold here. We picked gold here.

3 You can also use other materials. But basically

4 the idea is that you have all these nano-wells.

5 They could have different doses of the same drug in

6 or they could have many doses of a drug. Let\'s say

7 somebody wanted to do combination chemotherapy.

8 You could literally put a pharmacy on a chip some

9 day.

10 \[Slide.\]

11 These, as I mentioned, can be made quite

12 small. These are pencils and here is the chip.

13 They can be made bigger, too, but, basically, the

14 idea is that they are battery-powered, they are

15 going to be controlled by telemetry, ideally. This

16 is, like I say, the way you might open up a garage

17 door.

18 You could base the design based on things

19 like pacemakers, things like that. Again, all this

20 is kind of futuristic but let me again show you a

21 video to illustrate what might happen. What I am

22 going to do in this video is show you a single

at 283

1 well, and you have to look, because it happens

2 quickly and then we are just going to apply one

3 volt and that gold will dissolve. When it does,

4 sort of you will get a change in the background.

5 So we will take a look at this, see if the

6 video works.

7 \[Video.\]

8 Here it is. We are applying the voltage.

9 Just like that, it opens up. And, as soon as it

10 does, whatever is underneath it could come out. It

11 could come out right away if you put no polymer or

12 gel underneath it or it can come out more slowly if

13 you put a polymer or gel underneath it.

14 \[Slide.\]

15 Here is just an example. These are done

16 in rats. It is actually quite reproducible where

17 you get multiple pulses at different times. So

18 this is a way of getting a pulse delivery from

19 these little chips. So that is one example of a

20 nanotechnology kind of thing.

21 \[Slide.\]

22 The other, which some of these are already

at 284

1 in clinical trials, is to make what I will call

2 nano-sized medicines. The idea is that\--and this

3 is being done by a number of people\--but the idea

4 is that you could take drugs and couple them to

5 polymers. These are just five different designs

6 that people are looking at, like polymer drug

7 conjugates.

8 The reason people are doing this is

9 because you could lengthen the drug\'s lifetime in

10 the body. You might, somebody, and people are

11 trying to do this, target the drug to a particular

12 type of cell, like, say, a cancer cell. So all

13 these are things that are under active research

14 because they can impart new properties.

15 Also, gene therapy would be another

16 example. People are trying to couple, make

17 polymers that could deliver a DNA or RNAI to

18 patients somebody. But, again, these might need to

19 be nano in size so they will be taken up by

20 receptor-mediated endocytosis.

21 \[Slide.\]

22 So here I just tried to pick some issues

at 285

1 with some of these nanotechnology approaches. How

2 will you assess safety? How do you characterize

3 them? These are whole new issues that will come

4 up. What are the right biological

5 characterizations and what are the right

6 physical-chemical characterizations. What animal

7 models are appropriate and, of course, finally,

8 which I didn\'t even get into because we are not

9 there, what human tests will obviously need to be

10 done.

11 \[Slide.\]

12 The last area that I wanted to go over

13 today, and, again, it is a future area, is tissue

14 engineering. Of course, so much of what we always

15 here about are drugs or medical devices, but tissue

16 engineering really addresses things that are very

17 hard to fix with either drugs or devices.

18 Just to give you some statistics from an

19 article I wrote in Science with Jay Vacanti a few

20 years ago, this is just hugh. Annual tissue loss

21 and end-stage organ failure can be up to \$500

22 billion in healthcare costs. Part of the reason

at 286

1 for that is these are serious diseases where people

2 are dying of liver failure or heart failure, so you

3 have to do surgery. They are in the hospital for

4 long times. There are 8 million surgical

5 procedures per year.

6 \[Slide.\]

7 On this slide, I will just go over it

8 fairly quickly. These are just some of the

9 incidences, like, again\--or you might need to do

10 reconstructive surgery so you see problems with

11 bone, cartilage, tendon, skin, blood vessel, liver,

12 pancreas, heart. And this is a very incomplete

13 list, but it just gives you the idea that the

14 numbers are big and there are not good ways to

15 solve it.

16 \[Slide.\]

17 So tissue engineering, the paradigm that

18 we started thinking about, and I will just sort of

19 go through it quickly, is that, what you might do

20 some day is take isolated dissociated cells\--these

21 are bone, cartilage, liver, intestine, urothelial.

22 I will mention in a minute, and obviously, this

at 287

1 will be another big issue for you some day is stem

2 cells. What you might do is take stem cells and

3 convert them to one of these.

4 What we have done is we have put them on a

5 polymer to give them the right kind of structure.

6 You can make them into literally any shape or form

7 and use the polymer as a template for the cells to

8 reorganize depending on the polymer chemistry. I

9 will, again, give an example of two.

10 Grow them outside the body and then put

11 them inside the body where they might form a new

12 tissue.

13 \[Slide.\]

14 Just to show you a few pictures. This is

15 a scanning electron micrograph of the polymer

16 fibers with cells on them. This is liver cells.

17 \[Slide.\]

18 But then, to sort of illustrate the shape

19 idea, I thought I would pick an example that

20 Prashad Shastri who is now at Penn, he is going to

21 Vanderbilt, did is let\'s say we moved\--I will make

22 this up\--twenty or thirty years into the future and

at 288

1 somebody comes in and they want plastic surgery.

2 They say, \"We would like a new nose.\"

3 Maybe they want an upturned nose, or maybe

4 they will want a hooked nose. Probably not, but

5 the point is what I believe will happen someday is,

6 by using polymer fabrication techniques, coupled

7 with cad-cam techniques like computerated design,

8 you will be able to make a nose in any shape you

9 want or anything else.

10 So here is one of the noses that was made.

11 Then you could take cartilage cells on. In fact,

12 even though the nose is not being done clinically,

13 there are examples out in clinical trials where

14 people are taking cartilage cells from minimally

15 invasive procedures like ear biopsies,

16 arthroscopies, and making tissues for different

17 cosmetic or structural things, usually under

18 physician-sponsored INDs.

19 \[Slide.\]

20 Anyhow, I thought I would just give you

21 two examples to end the talk of tissue engineering

22 to give an idea of some of the considerations. The

at 289

1 first example is blood vessels. This is very

2 multidisciplinary, too, so it has been very hard to

3 make blood vessels less than 6 millimeters in

4 diameter. In fact, nobody has succeeded. That is

5 why they do a transplant.

6 \[Slide.\]

7 But here is a polymer that is 3

8 millimeters in diameter, 97 percent porous. This

9 work was done by Laura Nicholson at Duke when she

10 was a post-doc in my lab. But, basically, the

11 polymer is chemically modified. A blood vessel, of

12 course, has smooth-muscle cells\--that is SMC\--on

13 the outside and endothelial cells on the inside.

14 But one of the things that was tricky to

15 make blood vessels are, see, normally, if any of

16 you grow cells in culture and you go to any lab,

17 what you will see is they will sit there in 96 well

18 plates or tissue-culture flasks. They will just

19 sit there. But tissue engineering is more complex.

20 What we found is that none of those would

21 work to make blood vessels. What Laura did was

22 recognize that, if she was going to really get this

at 290

1 to work, she had to create an environment much like

2 the body. So, in the body, blood vessels are not

3 sitting there in an incubator. They are actually

4 hooked up to a pulsative pump, your heart.

5 So she actually created a series of

6 bioreactors which would mimic that and create

7 pulsatile radial stress.

8 \[Slide.\]

9 Here is a picture of that. She figured

10 out the right media. This was years of work.

11 Pulsatile pump beating at 165 beats per minute,

12 pulsing it over eight weeks.

13 \[Slide.\]

14 At the end of that time, you could

15 actually make a little blood vessel.

16 \[Slide.\]

17 And, if you characterized it\--this we also

18 published in Science. It is 50 percent collagen.

19 It is quite strong. Its rupture strength is

20 greater than 2000 millimeters of mercury. You can

21 suture them into animals. It has got similar

22 pharmacology. We just picked three markers, two

at 291

1 regular blood vessels.

2 \[Slide.\]

3 These were then put into pigs as the

4 animal model and, using angiography, you could see

5 the blood vessels are open months later.

6 One of the other issues that will come up

7 with a technology like this is how do you get the

8 cells. Well, one possibility is the patient, but

9 if you try to get them from the patient and

10 somebody had a heart attack and you wanted to do

11 this, then how do you grow them up? It is going to

12 take a long time so you might need a cell source.

13 That is where stem cells come in.

14 \[Slide.\]

15 Here is another study, this is just a

16 summary, that Levenberg in our lab did. This was

17 published in PNAS. She was able to take human

18 embryonic stem cells and actually clone out by

19 characterizing them appropriately the\--figuring out

20 the right day, basically, and the right antibodies,

21 she was actually to clone out human embryonic

22 endothelial cells and then put those in the

at 292

1 polymers.

2 These are, just, again, some markers.

3 This is histology, platelet endothelial-cell

4 adhesion Molecule 1, CD34. But, again, if you look

5 closely, you can see the lumen in the animals and

6 the blood vessels in there. So that is one example

7 that I wanted to give you and I will come back to

8 this in just a second in closing.

9 The other example, very quickly, is tissue

10 engineering, I think, actually provides a way

11 where, someday, you might even be able to aid in

12 spinal-cord repair.

13 So I thought I would pick another example

14 where Erin Lavick did this study. She, basically,

15 working with Evan Snyder, took neuronal stem cells,

16 put them on a special polymer she designed and did

17 about 50 rats. Most of these rats are basically

18 made\--well, I should say all the rats were made

19 paraplegic.

20 Let me just show you what happens

21 normally.

22 This is 100 days after, and you focus on

at 293

1 the rat\'s hind legs. This is another video. When

2 you make the rats paraplegic, here is what happens.

3 \[Video\]

4 He is just sort of dragging his feet.

5 This will go on for about 15 seconds. Also, the

6 paws are splayed in a kind of funny fashion.

7 Again, it is very important to realize that there

8 is a huge distance, I am sure everybody knows, from

9 animal models to humans, and this experiment is

10 still very early stages. But it will illustrate

11 what you can achieve some day.

12 The experiments were basically\--the

13 controls were nothing, the neuronal stem cells by

14 themselves, the polymer by itself.

15 \[Video\]

16 Now I am going to show you 100 days out

17 when these stem cells and the implant were put in

18 in the experimental animal within 24 hours of the

19 injury. Here you see a marked improvement. This

20 is actually not our best animal, either. These are

21 the means from the paper. Again, you can see this

22 animal, as pretty much all of the treated ones do

at 294

1 100 days out, are able to support their own weight

2 and the paws are splayed in a much more normal

3 fashion.

4 Again, this will be many years before this

5 is ready\--again, look at the paws\--before this is

6 ready probably for FDA review, but it gives you an

7 idea of what you might see someday.

8 \[Slide.\]

9 So, to end the talk, as I look at this

10 area, tissue engineering, here are just four points

11 that I wanted to raise; again, how should safety be

12 assessed? What are the appropriate markers? How

13 do you judge success? Also, how do you judge it

14 from a functional standpoint? Say, you took the

15 blood vessels of the spinal-cord\--by the way, these

16 are just examples. You can take this across twenty

17 or thirty different tissues or organs. And, again,

18 what are the appropriate animal models and then,

19 obviously, as you go further, how does one design a

20 clinical trial.

21 Basically, that is what I wanted to go

22 over today to both give you an idea of certain

at 295

1 areas which might be able to help accelerate

2 progress and others that I am sure we will need

3 plenty of help.

4 Thank you.

5 DR. SHINE: Just terrific. Again, we see

6 the opportunity that you have taken to move

7 biology, physics, engineering, technology,

8 materials together in a remarkable way with a

9 variety of these kinds of approaches.

10 I guess the principle question that I have

11 for you is, given what we have been talking about,

12 namely what has to happen, how do we develop the

13 science that underlies the process for moving drugs

14 from one end of the spectrum to the other in terms

15 of applicability, your work suggests that there is

16 a real potential for individual investigators or

17 groups of investigators doing the research which,

18 in fact, could underlie that process.

19 We have been struggling with the question

20 of who would fund that research and whether one has

21 to use, for example, public-private approaches,

22 industry-private approaches, and so forth in order

at 296

1 to see whether one can create enough of an activity

2 so that it could satisfy the needs of the process.

3 So I am just curious as to your

4 perspective on where the kind of unique

5 capabilities you have fit into this overall area of

6 science in support of the drug development and

7 application process.

8 DR. LANGER: I think it has to come from

9 both. I think the important thing that I read in

10 the FDA report is really the emphasis on not just

11 basic research but on these kinds of research. I

12 think, as the government\--if the government, say,

13 NIH is the obvious place, but there are obviously

14 other government arms\--looks at that, I think that

15 is an important step.

16 I mean, we have seen some of that from the

17 NIH in recent years where they are not just funding

18 hypothesis-driven research but also

19 technology-driven research. So I think certainly

20 the government and I think reports like the one

21 that was written help on that because they create

22 awareness.

at 297

1 I also think, if the opportunity is there

2 for companies, both small companies and large, to

3 make money, there also is an opportunity there.

4 The companies that I have mentioned, I think, the

5 small companies like TransForm or Momenta, they

6 basically saw unmet needs that they felt were huge

7 and, therefore, could create opportunities where

8 they might get funding from larger companies or

9 might be able to create brand-new products

10 themselves.

11 I think that is sort of the good thing

12 about America. You have this whole

13 venture-capital, entrepreneurial, area and people

14 see those opportunities. They say, boy, here is an

15 area that people haven\'t focused on at all. Maybe

16 I can make an impact.

17 But my feeling is what has been good

18 about, what I enjoyed reading in the report, is I

19 think it creates the awareness, to the extent that

20 various groups read it, on everybody\'s part. This

21 is an important area that could accelerate

22 progress.

at 298

1 DR. SHINE: Thank you. Does anybody have

2 a quick comment before we take a break? Also,

3 hopefully, Bob will be around in the next few

4 minutes.

5 DR. LANGER: Yes; I will be around until

6 4:00 and then I have to give a lecture at another

7 part of FDA.

8 DR. SHINE: If not, why don\'t we go ahead

9 and take a break. We will reconvene at 3:20

10 promptly so that we can get to our last three

11 presentations

12 Bob, thank you very, very much.

13 In the next few minutes, we are going to

14 get a perspective with regard to the role of the

15 critical path in drugs, devices and biologics from

16 folks within the agency who have responsibilities

17 in this area. The first will be Bob Temple who is

18 Director of the Office of Medical Policy, Center

19 for Drug Evaluation and Research who is going to

20 give an overview of opportunities related to drugs.

21 I believe that is what you are going to

22 do, Bob.

at 299

1 DR. TEMPLE: Right. If my slides are

2 loaded\--

3 Overview of Opportunities

4 Drugs

5 DR. TEMPLE: I will talk very fast and

6 will say nothing about biomarkers, by the way.

7 \[Slide.\]

8 I want to talk generally about efficiency

9 in drug development. As I go, I will tell you why

10 that seems relevant. In particular, I want to talk

11 about how to make studies that give you the answer

12 more unequivocally than we now do. That is the

13 general message.

14 \[Slide.\]

15 It is worth asking what would represent

16 efficiency in drug development. The first most

17 obvious thing you think of is smaller studies,

18 simpler studies, collecting less data, as Rob said,

19 doing trials in other countries, having a network

20 that you just drop trials into, using central IRBs

21 so you don\'t have to go to a million different

22 ones, all that kind of stuff.

at 300

1 There are real possibilities in all those

2 things but I am not mostly going to talk about

3 that. Some other day with another twenty minutes.

4 \[Slide.\]

5 What I want to talk about is improving the

6 quality of development so that you get valid

7 answers earlier, in particular that you learn

8 whether your drug is likely to work in Phase II

9 which is when you are supposed to learn that, or we

10 always thought so. If you knew that, you could

11 terminate development of things that aren\'t going

12 to work or that are unsafe earlier. You could

13 proceed into development only with drugs that are

14 likely to succeed.

15 Also, you wouldn\'t lose effective and safe

16 drugs because you got the wrong dose or something

17 like that. So that is what I want to talk about.

18 \[Slide.\]

19 I have been interested in efficiencies in

20 design for a long time, but we were recently told

21 of something that, to me, is unbelievable and

22 astonishing. PhRMA says, and there is no reason

at 301

1 not to believe them, they should know, that of

2 drugs completing Phase II, about half of them fail

3 in Phase III and often because they can\'t be shown

4 to be effective. Now that, to me, is amazing. It

5 is not what we always thought the way things were.

6 You are supposed to know in Phase II, for

7 most kinds of drugs, whether they are going to

8 work. That is what Phase II is for. So what is

9 the matter? Well, we don\'t know what is the matter

10 and I would say to PhRMA that their number-one task

11 is to find out. They ought to review all these

12 failures and figure it out. Doing anything else

13 doesn\'t make any sense. But they don\'t work for

14 me.

15 We have some thoughts, though, about what

16 could improve this and that is what I want to talk

17 about.

18 \[Slide.\]

19 We are doing a number of things\--I think I

20 won\'t dwell on this\--to try to meet earlier with

21 companies, to try to give what information we can

22 and what we know about because we see a lot of

at 302

1 mistakes. Those are going on and, because I have

2 got to finish on time, I won\'t do that. And we are

3 writing guidance, too.

4 But the failures have to be understood.

5 Some of them are going to be unavoidable. Some

6 rare adverse effect comes along. It is an

7 hepatotoxin. Okay; those drugs are going down.

8 Sometimes, there is no valid biomarker.

9 Platelet-active drugs don\'t have a plausible

10 biomarker so you have to do a 3,000-patient study

11 to see if they work and sometimes it doesn\'t work

12 out. You can\'t fix that. Sometimes adverse

13 effects show up after a long time.

14 \[Slide.\]

15 But sometimes there are avoidable

16 problems. For example, people don\'t use biomarkers

17 that do exist to find the right dose and they carry

18 out all the studies at the wrong dose, too high,

19 toxicity, too low, doesn\'t work. They don\'t study

20 a wide enough dose range so that things don\'t work

21 out right and there is nothing they can do about

22 it.

at 303

1 Sometimes, the Phase II study isn\'t really

2 positive but there is a subset in which it might

3 work, and it was trending favorably. So they

4 launch Phase III and they haven\'t really got a

5 basis for it. That is, as Lou Sheiner would say,

6 moving to confirm before you have learned enough.

7 I think failure to consider dose-finding

8 in Phase III is a bad mistake for reasons that I

9 will get into. Sometimes, they don\'t do

10 appropriate workup. And then, sometimes, there is

11 subset chasing, a very dangerous thing because

12 subset findings are unreliable as Rob showed you

13 even when we put them in our recommendations.

14 He didn\'t tell you that the rest of the

15 labeling was very clear that that was not

16 necessarily true.

17 \[Slide.\]

18 What I want to talk about is ways that

19 Phase II controlled trials could be redesigned,

20 designed differently, to give more unequivocal

21 answers. I am going to talk about three

22 possibilities. One is the general concept of

at 304

1 enrichment, putting people into trials who are

2 likely to have larger effects because then you get

3 a surer answer.

4 Reversing the usual sequence, we usually

5 randomize people to drug or placebo. You can take

6 people who are on drug and do a randomized

7 withdrawal and, in some cases, find a much more

8 efficient design. If I get to it and have time,

9 which I don\'t think I will, I will talk to you

10 about a titration design that Dr. Sheiner

11 suggested. I can\'t mention his name without noting

12 that he is in terrible distress and we are all very

13 saddened by that. Anyway, I will see if we get to

14 that.

15 \[Slide.\]

16 Enrichment, as a general concept, is any

17 selection maneuver that makes the population more

18 likely to be able to participate properly in the

19 study, have the endpoint of interest or respond to

20 treatment because all of those things increase the

21 study power for showing an effect. That is sort of

22 obvious. Enrichment goes on all the time, even if

at 305

1 it is not identified that way. We always do that.

2 Some of it, as I said, is routine and

3 nobody has any trouble with it. You try to find

4 likely compliers. You choose people who won\'t drop

5 out because of other diseases. You have a placebo

6 baseline to eliminate the people whose condition

7 goes away. You eliminate people who give

8 inconsistent treadmill results in an angina trial.

9 People do these all the time. Actually, it is not

10 absolutely true that nobody doesn\'t like this.

11 Sometimes, they say, oh, then it won\'t be

12 generalizable. But, this is fairly common

13 practice and everybody does it.

14 People who like to model trials can build

15 these things into their models and see how helpful

16 it is likely to be. That is pretty standard, not a

17 big deal.

18 \[Slide.\]

19 Where you understand that one disease is

20 different from another disease, it is perfectly

21 acceptable to do that. Just to take some obvious

22 examples, we know now, because we are smarter, that

at 306

1 edema can be hepatic, renal or cardiac. You

2 wouldn\'t study an inotrope in renal edema. That

3 would be silly. Nobody has any troubles with

4 those.

5 Now that we are even smarter, we know that

6 heart failure can be systolic or diastolic

7 dysfunction. So, if you want to study an inotrope,

8 you don\'t study it in diastolic dysfunction. It

9 will make it worse. So those kinds of distinctions

10 are fine and we distinguish causes of pain and

11 study particular kinds. We do that all the time.

12 \[Slide.\]

13 You can do the same thing in places where

14 we don\'t do it. For drugs that have a

15 renin-angiotensin mechanism, you could study them

16 in high-renin hypertension. I am sure you could

17 get a smaller trial, get better dose response if

18 you did it, but working up renin-angiotension

19 systems is sort of hard so nobody bothers. But you

20 could.

21 We are going to see a time when well

22 established genetic differences, sometimes

at 307

1 descriptive, sometimes really pathophysiological,

2 are going to be the basis for identifying people

3 who do or don\'t have a disease and who are not

4 likely to respond. I guess what impressed me

5 recently is a study in the New England Journal that

6 showed that a high placental growth factor predicts

7 the likelihood of an MI, is four times greater than

8 in people who have a low placental growth factor.

9 Well, if you are going to do a trial of

10 preventing heart attacks, who are you going to put

11 in your trial? High placental growth factor.

12 \[Slide.\]

13 Something that is not done because it

14 raises a question about generalizability is, in

15 difficult cases, to examine the patient response

16 before entry to identify likely responders. And

17 you then put them in a rigorous trial. That makes

18 people nervous, and I am really talking here about

19 Phase II. There might be another trial to pin down

20 the more general population, but this might give

21 you a better answer.

22 People do these sorts of things. CAST,

at 308

1 ill-fated as it was, was conducted in people who

2 had a 70 percent reduction in their ventricular

3 premature beats based on the idea that, if it

4 didn\'t do that, how could it possibly work. Very

5 sensible.

6 We have studied topical nitrates in people

7 who have a known blood-pressure response to

8 sublingual nitroglycerine. If they can\'t have

9 that, then they are not going to respond to the

10 nitrate.

11 \[Slide.\]

12 You could also screen for the true drug

13 response and then randomize only the responders to

14 get an idea of who is going to respond and then do

15 a rigorous study to really prove it. In fact,

16 Oates, Woosely and Roden did all their

17 antiarrhythmic studies that way. They gave the

18 drug open and then they found the responders and

19 put them into a trial. Thy didn\'t emphasize that,

20 but that is what they did.

21 \[Slide.\]

22 One might also look at the history of

at 309

1 response to a class. You probably can\'t see this

2 very well, but the third study down,

3 Sanchez-Torres, was in known responders to

4 diuretics. In this study of indapamide, they had a

5 response at 5 milligrams of 37 over 15. That ain\'t

6 the normal response to a diuretic. So the

7 possibility that you could shorten the development

8 process by picking people known to respond is of

9 interest.

10 \[Slide.\]

11 There are many other possibilities where

12 this might be an efficient mode of development.

13 Where, as a general matter, you do a clinical

14 screen, you give the drug to the group, find the

15 responders, take the drug away and than randomize

16 to the drug. It has been notoriously difficult in

17 GI diseases\--not things that reduce acid. Those

18 have been pretty easy\--but GI diseases where you

19 are trying to modify motility and do something

20 useful, it has been notoriously difficult to show

21 that these work. Cisapride, domperidone, things

22 like that.

at 310

1 One possibility is to do that sort of

2 screen, look at the apparent responders and then

3 randomize and see if you can confirm what appears

4 to be a response. All of things make the

5 assumption and depend on the idea that, within a

6 group of apparently similar people, there are, in

7 fact, subsets\--genetic, we don\'t know. You don\'t

8 have to know\--who respond differently. The reason

9 it is so hard to show anything in GI disease is

10 that it is really multiple diseases, different

11 mechanisms and so only 10, 20 percent of the

12 population can respond to any given thing. So that

13 is a possibility.

14 The various pulmonary, anti-asthmatic

15 drugs, other than beta-agonists, have

16 disappointingly small average effects. Well, one

17 possible reason is that there are really multiple

18 diseases with different mechanisms and we don\'t

19 know it yet. Well, there is a possibility that you

20 could find out. I won\'t give my cromolyn anecdote.

21 It involves my son being cured of his asthma by a

22 drug that hardly works on average, suggesting to me

at 311

1 that there is a subset.

2 I just want to point out, any randomized

3 withdrawal study, which I will describe, has some

4 elements of this.

5 \[Slide.\]

6 A third opportunity, really important, is

7 picking people likely to have the event. Now, this

8 is automatic in a symptomatic disease. Everybody

9 has the symptoms so 100 percent of the people are

10 candidates to get whatever you want.

11 If you look at outcome trials, whether it

12 is in cholesterol lowering or heart failure, we

13 have systematically studied the sickest people

14 first, shown an effect in them and then moved down.

15 Well, the sickest people have more events. In

16 consensus, a study of maybe 400 people, the

17 mortality was something like 40 percent at six

18 months; a lot of events, easy to do the study. And

19 you saw the same things in cholesterol where you

20 started with 4S where everybody had cholesterol of

21 260 and recently had a heart attack, and then we

22 have been moving down.

at 312

1 We already know that certain genetic risk

2 factors are going to be able to do the same way.

3 If you want to do prophylaxis against ovarian

4 cancer, you pick people with the characteristic

5 genetic markup that says they are going to get

6 ovarian cancer. So we are going to see more and

7 more possibilities like that.

8 There is another more mundane example.

9 One of the most successful sets of treatments for

10 motility-modifying drugs has been, and also for

11 acid resisters, in preventing heartburn in response

12 to meals. The way you do that is you find people

13 who respond to a classic meal. The classic meal is

14 pizza with everything and unlimited chianti wine.

15 You put them in your trial and very modest effects

16 have been successfully demonstrated in those trials

17 because the population is enriched with people who

18 will have the disease instead of waiting for them

19 to have it.

20 \[Slide.\]

21 I guess I want to say this again. An

22 enriched population has to be recognized for what

at 313

1 it is. It is not a slice of general population,

2 but it tells you\--it provides proof of concept. It

3 tells you this is a therapy that, at least in

4 somebody, is going to work. Then, I would argue,

5 in Phase III, you go find out who it works in and

6 pin that down.

7 How is my time?

8 DR. SHINE: You have got eight minutes.

9 DR. TEMPLE: Ach. I can talk slow. In

10 that case, maybe I will go back to that anecdote.

11 \[Slide.\]

12 In 1975, Amery, a Belgian cardiologist,

13 proposed what he thought was a more ethical design

14 for doing angina trials. That is because, in 1975,

15 our criteria, our requirements for angina trials

16 involved more than a six-month placebo-controlled

17 period. It is really hard to imagine.

18 He thought there were better ways to do

19 it. What he said was, instead of randomizing

20 people with angina to drug or treatment, he gave

21 people the treatment, which they thought was going

22 to work, and then randomized people, in fact,

at 314

1 people who appeared to respond to it, to either the

2 test drug or to placebo. You can randomize to

3 multiple doses and get dose-response information

4 out of this.

5 The endpoint could either be

6 time-to-failure. Your angina comes back, you are

7 out of the study, and a lot of people find that

8 attractive because you don\'t get treatment that

9 doesn\'t work for a long time, or some conventional

10 measure like angina attacks per week.

11 This is actually the way antidepressant

12 maintenance studies are carried out now, in some

13 sense, how else could you carry them out. But it

14 is useful whenever you want to assess long-term

15 effectiveness but couldn\'t use a long-term placebo.

16 Nobody is going to have a six-month

17 placebo-controlled hypertension trial anymore. It

18 wouldn\'t be ethical, but you can test for

19 persistent effectiveness by taking the drug away

20 randomly at the end of six months and seeing if the

21 pressure comes back up.

22 You probably don\'t want to withdraw it

at 315

1 abruptly because there are withdrawal effects,

2 things like that.

3 \[Slide.\]

4 That could also be used for blood sugar,

5 conceivably for heart failure, things like that.

6 It turns out that design is very attractive for

7 pediatric studies because our pediatric committees

8 really don\'t like the idea of having kids having

9 symptoms for a long time. In this design, as soon

10 as they have a symptom, they are out of the study.

11 They have failed.

12 It is also worth noting that in

13 depression, which we have been reading about all

14 the time, where standard placebo-controlled trials

15 fail about half the time, these trials almost never

16 fail. We are aware of just one trial that failed.

17 That is because the population is enriched because

18 all the support that goes one in a

19 placebo-controlled trial isn\'t there because you

20 wait until the event happens. It doesn\'t have to

21 happen at any particular time. Anyway, it is a

22 very attractive kind of design.

at 316

1 \[Slide.\]

2 I want to show you two examples. This

3 goes back a long time ago. This is nifedipine in

4 vasospastic angina. This is the original data we

5 were given out of what was described as a study but

6 really wasn\'t. It was just a hundred people who

7 were treated.

8 Our advisory committee said, we don\'t know

9 what the natural history of vasospastic angina is.

10 There had never been a drug for it. So maybe it

11 was just going away. So we got Pfizer to do a

12 trial, a very simple trial. They took a bunch of

13 people who were on nifedipine of which there were

14 many. They watched them for two weeks to make sure

15 they were paying attention and then did a

16 randomized withdrawal study of four weeks duration.

17 \[Slide.\]

18 You can see this was not a very large

19 trial, 28 people. I also should note that the

20 patients were all available. You didn\'t have to

21 wait for people with a rare disease to come to your

22 clinic. There they were being treated because of

at 317

1 the open follow up.

2 Early withdrawal was the primary endpoint.

3 They had five of those and one person who should

4 have withdrawn but didn\'t know she was supposed to

5 and had a heart attack, so it is either five or six

6 versus zero. The other measures of success all

7 were quite good and we were able to approve the

8 drug on the basis of this extremely easy and

9 extremely rapid study. Obviously, only the people

10 who were doing well on the drug got into this trial

11 so it is enriched.

12 \[Slide.\]

13 Recently, we approved sodium oxybate for

14 cataplexy with narcolepsy. We had one conventional

15 trial where people were randomized but a second

16 confirmatory trial was done in people who were on

17 the drug because they were doing well on it. And

18 they were all, obviously, quite available. You

19 just had to call them on the phone because you were

20 providing the drug for them.

21 We looked at median attacks per two weeks

22 in people who were randomized to placebo or to

at 318

1 sodium oxybate after being on it. So, at baseline,

2 the placebo group had had four attacks per two

3 weeks. They went up to 21. The sodium oxybate had

4 had 1.9 attacks per week and they stayed at 1.9.

5 So, in no time at all, you have a nice confirmatory

6 study, very solid.

7 \[Slide.\]

8 Other things you could do with randomized

9 withdrawal is make this subset observation, which

10 is highly suspect, into something real. It might

11 take more than one trial group to do it, but, the

12 overall study is negative, maybe leaning favorably

13 and it is very tempting to find the obviously

14 pharmacologically based subset\--all

15 pharmacologically based subsets seem obvious when

16 the drug looks better in them\--and actually test

17 it; that is, take those people and do the

18 randomized withdrawal study, thus turning an

19 observation that is highly suspect and likely to be

20 misleading into something that could be pretty

21 solid.

22 \[Slide.\]

at 319

1 There are some other interesting things.

2 Sometimes, a drug has some side effects. You are

3 not sure whether you really think it works well

4 enough. One way to find out is to take people who

5 seem to have had a dramatic response and, of

6 course, in a controlled trial, you don\'t really

7 know whether they did. You just see a range of

8 relationships. You look at medians. Take that

9 population and do a randomized withdrawal study and

10 see if they fall apart.

11 We suggested that be done, actually, for

12 lotrenex and our suggestion was not taken. There

13 was probably other evidence that some people

14 responded very well, but that would have been an

15 unbelievably quick way to get an answer to that

16 question because all of the people were out there.

17 They were on the drug. It wasn\'t done.

18 \[Slide.\]

19 The randomized withdrawal, as I said, has

20 a lot of advantages. It is enriched; that is, you

21 are likely to be able to see an effect if there is

22 one because you are picking people who seem to have

at 320

1 had a response. And if there is a mixture of

2 potential responders and non-responders, this is

3 the way to find them, and do the study in the

4 people who do it.

5 It is efficient. They already exist. It

6 has an ethical attractiveness because, as soon as

7 people go bad, they are out of the trial. It could

8 verify a subset finding and it is easy to turn

9 these into dose-response studies.

10 \[Slide.\]

11 So I have got a couple of minutes. Let me

12 just touch on dose finding. We won\'t really know

13 this until PhRMA or somebody goes back and sees why

14 all these trials, all these drugs, fail in Phase

15 III. But one of the things that we believe is the

16 dose-finding isn\'t very well done.

17 \[Slide.\]

18 Some people think that dose finding is

19 finished in Phase II. That is just totally wrong.

20 You have very little safety information. Phase III

21 should be filled with dose-response studies. That

22 is true in hypertension and it is not reliably true

at 321

1 on some other places.

2 \[Slide.\]

3 Obviously, everybody should use their

4 pharmaco\--this is for Larry Lesko. They should all

5 use their pharmacodynamic information to design

6 their dose-response trial.

7 \[Slide.\]

8 Sometimes, you can redesign the trial. I

9 have given this example so many times I am sure Bob

10 Meyer would wish I would go away. But it is a

11 striking observation that, if you do field studies

12 of antihistamines, you put hundreds of people into

13 each group and you fail a large percentage of the

14 time. That is because you can\'t control the

15 pollen\--did I say for allergic rhinitis?

16 Antihistamines in allergic rhinitis.

17 It is also clear that if you blow the

18 antigen into a chamber in a controlled way, much

19 smaller studies give much clearer evidence of

20 effectiveness and you can learn things very well

21 about dose response, time-of-onset,

22 duration-of-action, and stuff like that. So this

at 322

1 is what people do now. They do their workup in the

2 chamber and then they confirm it with a field study

3 and everybody is reasonably happy.

4 What I am hoping we will find over the

5 months and years that we are working on this is

6 other examples of where you can enormously increase

7 the efficiency of trial design by doing similar

8 things. We will ask people. I don\'t have other

9 examples yet, I have to tell you.

10 \[Slide.\]

11 One thing that is never done but could be

12 is to carry out dose-response studies related to

13 effectiveness in people who are known to respond to

14 the drug. What is the point of putting people who

15 can\'t respond into a trial to find out what the

16 dose response is when they can\'t possibly respond.

17 \[Slide.\]

18 You have already seen that.

19 \[Slide.\]

20 Other places to do it. Study a full range

21 of doses.

22 \[Slide.\]

at 323

1 There is a small pitch for examining the

2 maintenance dose through a randomized withdrawal

3 study, and the last thing, which I am not going to

4 be able to get to but I will want to mention it is

5 a design that Lou Sheiner proposed in 1982 to use

6 titration designs in an informative way.

7 One of the things about many of the

8 studies we do is a lot of people never get the best

9 dose they could, the highest dose they could take,

10 partly because if you don\'t interpret those studies

11 properly, you get misled. You get an

12 umbrella-shaped dose-response curve because the

13 high dose only goes to people who can\'t respond.

14 What he did was look at the individual

15 dose responses and teased dose-response information

16 out of a titration design, a very efficient thing.

17 If you want to study eight doses, you don\'t need

18 eight groups. You need one group on drug and one

19 group on placebo. It is worth thinking about. You

20 will see it in the slides. It is a picture from

21 his thing.

22 \[Slide.\]

at 324

1 All of these designs\--I want to make one

2 last emphasis and then I will go away\--all of these

3 things have been used. They are all possible.

4 They make people nervous about the question of

5 generalizability but these should not be thought of

6 as the only trials that are ever going to be done

7 on the drug. They are trials during Phase II to

8 convince you that you actually have a drug which,

9 it turns out, from PhRMA\'s data, is a big problem.

10 So we are going to be thinking about these

11 things more as time goes by.

12 Thanks.

13 DR. SHINE: Thank you, Robert. So we have

14 learned at least four approaches to designing

15 clinical trials that may help the process.

16 We are going to go on with the

17 presentations and then, if you would be available

18 for questions after Jesse\'s presentation, that

19 would be helpful.

20 DR. TEMPLE: Yes.

21 DR. SHINE: We are now going to look at

22 issues with regard to devices. Larry Kessler,

at 325

1 Director of the Office of Science and Engineering

2 Laboratories in the Center for Devices and

3 Radiologic Health

4 Take it away, Larry.

5 Dr. KESSLER: Thank you.

6 Overview of Opportunity

7 Devices

8 DR. KESSLER: Thank you. You may have

9 noticed Dr. Feigal, who is leaving the Center, has

10 let me do this. I thought it was because he was

11 just leaving but I think it is because he decided,

12 once he saw the agenda and asked me to follow Bob

13 Langer and Bob Temple, he thought, let me follow

14 Bob Langer and Bob Temple and not him. So I want

15 to thank David, in his absence, for that favor. It

16 is very kind.

17 \[Slide.\]

18 I am actually going to do something a

19 little different than Dr. Temple. I think I will

20 be relatively brief.

21 \[Slide.\]

22 I am going to first mention\--I always

at 326

1 mention to an audience I don\'t know that devices

2 are different than a lot of other medical products.

3 The are varied, and I will talk about that a little

4 bit. I will talk a little bit about the vision in

5 the Center for Devices and Radiological Health and

6 our version of the critical path.

7 Then I am going to mention some

8 opportunities in the device world in very concrete

9 terms and I will be very brief about each of them,

10 and then mention some of the things that we are

11 trying to do to take this into the future.

12 \[Slide.\]

13 The device world is broad and vast;

14 blood-pressure cuffs, contact lenses, heart valves,

15 hip implants, infusion pumps, pacemakers. So the

16 critical path for a contact lens is not the same as

17 the critical path for a test strip or for a hip

18 implant. They are different animals. They are

19 very different animals; how they are regulated, how

20 they are studied, how they are approved. So there

21 isn\'t a good \"one size fits all.\"

22 I know it is not true, that just one size

at 327

1 fits all, in the other product areas, but, for

2 devices, we are much weirder than other product

3 areas. So thinking through how we solve that

4 problem, the problem of critical path is going to

5 different.

6 I did not hear Dr. Jacobson\'s comments

7 this morning but she and I have talked, and the

8 pipeline issue for the device world, as Janet has

9 mentioned and I know Liz mentioned, is different.

10 It is a different problem. Trying to accelerate

11 product is no less important in the device area.

12 But pipeline product is a little different problem

13 for us although I will point to at least one area

14 that we share with the other medical-product

15 centers, and I will talk about that at the end of

16 my talk, where it is not dissimilar for the device

17 area from drugs and biologics.

18 \[Slide.\]

19 We have been using this wheel to talk

20 about the designed obsolescence circle that the

21 device world lives in. So, in our critical path,

22 trying to get things through the preclinical world,

at 328

1 the clinical world into manufacturing represents

2 just as big a hurdle for the device world as it

3 does for pharmaceuticals and biologics.

4 \[Slide.\]

5 I am going to skip that.

6 \[Slide.\]

7 I am going to talk about five examples.

8 The first one I am going to talk about actually is

9 a success story. This is where the agency, in

10 collaboration with the National Cancer Institute,

11 industry and academia actually helped solve a

12 critical-path problem about four or five years ago.

13 It started in the mid-1990s when digital

14 mammography was trying to come on line. The way to

15 put digital mammography on the market was to try

16 and do adequate studies to demonstrate its

17 effectiveness and its safety. Well, the initial

18 studies done by the imaging companies were far too

19 small to actually give us adequate evidence because

20 they did not take into account reader variability.

21 So the early studies brought to the agency were,

22 sadly, difficult and more or less failed designs.

at 329

1 We went back with the industry and sat

2 down and said, what can we do. And we, and they,

3 and academia and the NCI developed a variety of

4 multiple-reader, multiple-case receiver

5 operating-characteristic curves. This is

6 methodology. It allowed us to bring these products

7 to market with enriched studies. They are not

8 unlike some of the things that Bob Temple was just

9 talking about. These multiple-reader,

10 multiple-case studies were done with enriched

11 populations and allowed us to get digital onto the

12 market faster.

13 Note that we followed up with the NCI with

14 a large study now being conducted by the NCI\'s and

15 the American College of Radiology\'s Imaging Network

16 Consortium to look at the performance of this

17 product in the postmarket period because we still

18 have questions about this product now that it is on

19 the market.

20 For us, that is part of our critical path.

21 We don\'t end with putting something on the market

22 and saying we are all done. There are serious and

at 330

1 significant postmarket issues and digital is one of

2 the areas where we have remained concerns and those

3 results won\'t be in for a few years while this

4 product is on the market imaging women for breast

5 cancer.

6 \[Slide.\]

7 I am now going to talk about a couple of

8 examples and be very concrete about the kind of

9 problems we face in the device world and the things

10 that can be done jointly where the government has a

11 role and we hope industry, academia, NIH and others

12 can play with us to help solve critical-path

13 problems.

14 One of them, we find, is an imaging of

15 peripheral vasculature. As we all know,

16 drug-eluting stents have been proven successful for

17 the coronary world but the question we have is,

18 will they work in the periphery and will standard

19 imaging of lower extremities provide adequate data

20 for us to figure out how to go to market. The

21 answer is, we don\'t know, but we are acutely aware

22 that the way to do this kind of study is going to

at 331

1 require the size of patient populations usually not

2 available to most of the device industry in this

3 ballpark.

4 So, figuring out how we can do cooperative

5 and collaborative studies across sponsors where

6 peripheral imaging is done well and done accurately

7 is going to be a challenge. Right now, the imaging

8 techniques for things like ultrasound, the

9 endpoints are not well known and it is not clear we

10 have confidence in the imaging results from this

11 part of the anatomy.

12 \[Slide.\]

13 Ablative therapies; atrial fibrillation is

14 one of the most common forms of fibrillation in

15 chest problems. It is commonly diagnosed and there

16 are problems in demonstrating true benefit in some

17 of the studies associated with ablative therapies

18 for atrial fib. Like the last study problem, this

19 will require a large patient series.

20 But, before we even get there, there is

21 not universal agreement between the agency and the

22 academic community on what are relevant endpoints

at 332

1 to study for the effectiveness of ablative

2 therapies and how do we do the analysis.

3 So, again, here is a critical problem. It

4 is solvable but it requires a joint collaborative

5 approach between the industry and between the

6 agency as well as academic input.

7 \[Slide.\]

8 Intraocular lenses; an enormously

9 interesting area because we have had a lot of

10 success in treating cataracts in older patients.

11 But the current IOLs have limits because they have

12 a single focal length and the human eye has

13 multiple focal lengths. The industry has been

14 trying to solve this problem for a long time and

15 what it would like to do is, when it takes a

16 crystalline lens out of an aged person, an aged

17 crystalline lens, it would like to keep the

18 capsular membrane intact and put in a polymer, and

19 the polymer would form a shell and form a new lens.

20 The problems are we don\'t have really good

21 control of optical quality, material properties and

22 biocompatibility endpoints. So this is an area

at 333

1 where we know what the industry wants to do, we

2 know the problem they are trying to solve, but

3 trying to get from the possible solutions of this

4 problem\--we have been trying to do this for about a

5 decade to solve the IOL problem by flexible polymer

6 lenses in the capsular membrane has not been solved

7 and we haven\'t yet solved these problems.

8 So, trying to work here, this is really

9 very much lab-based work and correlating the

10 lab-based work with clinical-outcome studies is

11 where we are trying to go with this.

12 \[Slide.\]

13 The last example I am going to give is one

14 that all of the product areas share, and it is

15 genomic and proteomic devices. The reason I am

16 raising this is last week I attended a jointly

17 sponsored PhRMA-FDA meeting on the science of

18 genomics and proteomics, where are we going.

19 At the end of one of the talks from

20 industry\--it was a terrific talk, but the last

21 slide, in the last entry to the slide, given to a

22 wide number of FDA statisticians and regulators

at 334

1 was, \"Our algorithms are learning algorithms,\"

2 which is great in the discovery phase. But now he

3 wants to bring that to us to approve as a product.

4 The product we would approve would be an

5 inconsistent algorithm that would update itself.

6 For discovery, that is terrific. For

7 science, that is wonderful. For product

8 regulation, that is going to give us heartburn. It

9 is going to give us heartburn. It is going to give

10 heartburn to the Center for Drugs and for

11 Biologics. How we are going to allow algorithms

12 like this to be used outside of the investigational

13 arena is not yet clear.

14 There are some very exciting algorithms

15 out there. Some developments, particular in

16 screening for cancer with proteomics, look

17 incredibly promising. But, if they are going to be

18 algorithms that change over time, the regulatory

19 hurdles that we have to face to get through the

20 critical path are going to be tough.

21 Dr. Roses is smiling. Do you know

22 something I don\'t know, because if you know how to

at 335

1 solve this problem, then I am going to go visit him

2 at SmithKlineGlaxo and we are going to help solve

3 that problem together.

4 \[Slide.\]

5 I am going to end with some of our future

6 directions. One of the things we are trying to do

7 is identify some of the key problems in the device

8 world and we hope to work closely with industry in

9 going that. We have begun to prioritize our

10 scientific efforts and some of those are directed

11 to some of the things I talked about with you

12 today.

13 Finally, we have been pursuing

14 collaborations with the agency within FDA, with the

15 NIH, particularly with the new National Institute

16 of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering and with

17 the National Cancer Institute and, more recently,

18 with industry. We are hoping to have an active

19 partnership with them in solving some of our

20 critical-path problems.

21 I have run short. I hope you don\'t mind,

22 Dr. Shine.

at 336

1 DR. SHINE: I am delighted. That gives us

2 an opportunity to have a conversation. I would ask

3 if any members of the committee have any questions

4 or observations for Larry.

5 One of my questions is to what extent, for

6 example, working out the digital-mammography

7 problem, it sounds like that was a problem and you

8 did an ad hoc solution in terms of dealing with

9 that problem in collaboration with multiple

10 companies getting a large enough population and so

11 forth. To what extent are you in a position to

12 prospectively propose a variety of those kinds of

13 approaches to device manufacturers so that they can

14 think about a variety of ways that they would deal

15 with these kinds of issues as they are developing

16 new products?

17 DR. KESSLER: It is going to vary across

18 the device spectrum. There are certain areas, and

19 I think the genomics and proteomics ones are

20 exactly the kind of area where we have identified

21 the regulatory problem and the scientific problem.

22 We don\'t have solutions yet but I think the

at 337

1 workshop that I talked about that was sponsored by

2 CDER is exactly along the road to say, we know

3 there are regulatory problems. We can see them

4 down the road. What can we do together, from the

5 methods standpoint, that can anticipate those

6 problems.

7 We are doing it in a couple of other

8 areas. We are doing it in the pathology of the

9 vasculature. The Coronary Division is doing a lot

10 of outreach. We have been coming to the

11 transcatheter meetings every year to talk about

12 regulatory problems that we see down the road and

13 inviting both the academic world and the industry

14 who are well represented at TCT every year to

15 anticipate the science and regulatory problems and

16 working on them prospectively.

17 Other areas, I don\'t think we have been

18 nearly as foreshadowing as that. I would just

19 challenge you a little bit. The solution in the

20 digital-mammography area, I don\'t think it was

21 quite as ad hoc as it appeared. It was actually

22 part of a systematic series of research that has

at 338

1 been done in the imaging area where we have been, I

2 think, on the cutting edge of imaging science in

3 the FDA. It has been an unusual collection of

4 scientists that have been there. We are starting

5 to use those methods that we have designed for the

6 diagnostic imaging world outside that.

7 Again, we are trying to stretch, because

8 what you can do with diagnostic imaging is not that

9 much different than in diagnostic in vitros, for

10 example. So we are starting to translate some of

11 that ROC work elsewhere.

12 DR. SHINE: By ad hoc, I was referring to

13 the imaging activity. What I am interested in, it

14 sounds like you are moving so that, in other areas,

15 you can articulate what these future algorithms

16 might look like, whether they are computer

17 algorithms or other kinds of\--other observations,

18 comments about this interesting presentation?

19 DR. KESSLER: I know he has got something

20 to say.

21 DR. ROSES: I could talk about genetics

22 all day. Genomics, I limit myself. I think, in

at 339

1 terms of discovery, that genomics has been used and

2 is highly overrated. I think, in terms of its role

3 in the early development and the problem, seeing

4 whether problems that you might run into are part

5 of the genetic makeup of the animal versus the drug

6 being used, there are some very useful uses for

7 this tool.

8 On the other hand, algorithms for using

9 that with respect to changes that might occur as a

10 result of the drug, I fully agree with you. On the

11 other hand, I think one of the things that the\--I

12 haven\'t said anything about this today, but I think

13 one of the things that needs to be clearly

14 differentiated in the critical-path documents and

15 in the discussions about it is the virtual total

16 difference between efficacy pharmacogenetics,

17 adverse-event or safety pharmacogenetics and

18 genomics, \"omics,\" things like that. I think we

19 get very sloppy if we start thinking about those

20 things as the same thing.

21 DR. SHINE: Good. Any other comments?

22 Larry, thank you very, very much.

at 340

1 DR. KESSLER: Thank you.

2 DR. SHINE: Our last presentation is from

3 Jesse Goodman, Director of the Center for Biologics

4 Evaluation and Research. He is going to look at

5 opportunities with regard to biologics.

6 Overview of Opportunities

7 Biologics

8 DR. GOODMAN: Good afternoon. I guess I

9 am the last person and have the most slides, so I

10 will try to correct for that by going quickly.

11 \[Slide.\]

12 But, basically, what I am going to do is

13 sort of strongly endorse the concept of this

14 research initiative, talk about efforts we have

15 made already within the center to be sure that our

16 science base is applied and some of the things I

17 think can be models for how we can successfully

18 work with others and identify product problems and

19 help solve them.

20 Then, as Larry and Bob did, I would

21 suggest a few what I have kind of called things

22 that have, both in talking to the industry and

at 341

1 innovators we work with and then, from our own

2 experience, and I think Janet may have mentioned

3 this, but we see an array of products across the

4 field and have the advantage of being able to

5 recognize things which multiple people are

6 potentially confronting and sort of have a list at

7 the end of some of what we see as rather large or

8 grand opportunities for science having an impact on

9 product development.

10 \[Slide.\]

11 Some of this I will go through kind of

12 fast, but this is the spectrum of current products.

13 Like Larry, I want to remind people that there are

14 many critical paths. There are many different

15 types of products that, even within the world of

16 small molecules, there are many critical paths,

17 certainly, when you get to a diversity of biologics

18 ranging from cells to vaccines, et cetera. And

19 there are also many different acceptable clinical

20 outcomes, like, certainly, a 10 percent efficacy in

21 a cancer drug might be acceptable. That is not

22 going to be acceptable in a vaccine. We don\'t even

at 342

1 have an acceptability of a 10 percent failure rate

2 in a vaccine.

3 So that diversity is something we have to

4 keep in mind and there is also a diversity of tools

5 that are needed to achieve that.

6 \[Slide.\]

7 Janet has pretty much set the groundwork

8 for this but I would like to go over a couple of

9 concepts. What we are really trying to do here is

10 facilitate product development through better tools

11 and the latest technologies and also to focus our

12 intramural and extramural science as the resources

13 permit on things that I would characterize as good

14 investments, things that are problems out there

15 that we can help to solve with you.

16 Some examples and things that, within the

17 last year at the center and previously, we have

18 tried to focus resources on is identifying areas,

19 especially in new technologies where\--and

20 especially in these diverse biologics or

21 public-health technologies where there may not be

22 large research infrastructures or the products may

at 343

1 be so diverse and unsettled that one person\'s

2 problem is not another person\'s problem as far as

3 they know.

4 This includes things like standards,

5 methods, assays and also just to emphasize the

6 importance of guidance, especially with new

7 technologies.

8 Examples in our shop are things you have

9 heard about and others have mentioned, gene

10 therapy, tissue engineering, which we work together

11 with CDRH on, stem cells, new vaccine technologies,

12 blood substitutes, pathogen inactivation. These

13 are areas that have generally had much less focused

14 resources on the science of actualization of

15 products rather than on the basic science of what

16 is the gene, what is the antigen, what is the

17 T-cell.

18 I think another important thing,

19 particularly in cutting-edge technologies is

20 assuring adequate internal expertise, be sure we

21 have the right partnerships with industry, et

22 cetera.

at 344

1 Just a couple of quick examples. I am

2 going to through a number more also quickly, but

3 identify roadblocks and develop appropriate

4 solutions. One example we had about a year ago was

5 that essentially all these new smallpox vaccines

6 were being developed, there was a need for Vaccinia

7 immunoglobulin. There was only a rather archaic

8 1950\'s six-well, hand-done, culture-plate

9 neutralization assay for Vaccinia virus.

10 So we set some of our people who had

11 developed similar assays for other antibodies loose

12 to develop a Vaccinia gene-reporter assay to titer

13 antibody levels. We just, then, gave that out to

14 various companies that wanted to use it, and this

15 allowed VIG to be developed and the clinical trials

16 to be on a fast track.

17 That is not necessarily my endorsement,

18 then, of the vaccines because obviously they have

19 been challenging.

20 \[Slide.\]

21 Again, the emphasize it is not just about

22 science but it is about science-based guidance and

at 345

1 standards and outreach and working with others.

2 Again, I would like to emphasize a couple of

3 characteristics about this. I think internal

4 expertise is very important. I think product

5 developers, whether they are academic or

6 industrial, would rather talk to people who

7 understand what it is they are doing and they can

8 be helpful.

9 This could benefit multiple sponsors. It

10 can maintain staff cutting-edge expertise. I also

11 think there is a real connection to the quality of

12 the review process that FDA provides, that knowing

13 what you are talking about, having been there on

14 some level, scientific, clinical, looking at that,

15 having been somewhere broadly, is very important

16 and it reduces the risk that you are just going to

17 say, oh, my god; I don\'t understand this. This

18 scares me, or something that is not good for

19 sponsors either, not identifying problems because

20 you didn\'t figure it out from the last time you saw

21 it and you could have just saved this person, what,

22 \$500 million. I don\'t know. All I want is a small

at 346

1 percent.

2 \[Slide.\]

3 Just to provide some examples. You know,

4 we were thinking about, well, what are some of the

5 things that we feel good about that the center has

6 done in the last year or so and then,

7 retrospectively, how does this concept of critical

8 path and scientific contribution fit into this and

9 what have we done.

10 Well, we are really excited about what we

11 were able to accomplish with the blood industry,

12 the diagnostics industry and CDC on West Nile virus

13 screening. Part of that was recognizing the

14 problem quickly, bringing together the right

15 people. But part of that was the science and the

16 critical-path science.

17 It was recognizing that we were going to

18 need standards. It was having worked with the

19 broad diagnostics industry over the years to

20 develop a critical path in a way for

21 nucleic-acid-based testing and then being able to

22 show them that and how to use it very quickly and

at 347

1 provide samples, et cetera. This worked out well.

2 But we don\'t have mechanisms or

3 infrastructure in place to do this on a routine

4 basis. We are, more and more, cobbling this

5 together, especially dealing with emerging

6 infectious-disease threats, et cetera, but it is

7 something that we need to support prospectively

8 both infrastructurewise and then sciencewise. We

9 need to be ready with the science when all these

10 things come along.

11 There are some other things, but this has

12 been part of what we have been able to do, for

13 example, in terms of the response to SARS where,

14 within a couple of\--I was told this morning\--I was

15 at a meeting where we were discussing vaccine

16 issues with industry and others and I was told that

17 there are now at least five viable vaccine

18 candidates in development.

19 Well, this is in part because of how

20 industry and us could work together in this

21 paradigm and work with our colleagues like CDC and

22 WHO, provide strains suitable for vaccine

at 348

1 manufacturing quickly, get together about assays

2 and pathways. There is a long way to go on that

3 particular issue but, again, it is an example.

4 Given the time, I will just skip through these, I

5 think.

6 \[Slide.\]

7 But some examples; new technologies, as I

8 mentioned, are particularly good areas for

9 investment here. I would say new technologies and

10 unmet public-health needs. But we have worked with

11 NIH on some of these like trying to understand the

12 gene-therapy adverse events in terms of

13 leukemogenesis and then trying to have an

14 intelligent science-based regulatory response to

15 those events so that we get the products safer and

16 improve them but don\'t kill a promising field to

17 get that right.

18 It requires knowing what are the questions

19 you need to ask to move the field forward. We have

20 increasingly used our advisory committees almost

21 prophylactically to help define a pathway forward

22 in product development. So we have islet cells as

at 349

1 incredibly promising treatment for severe

2 refractory diabetes. Promising. Disparate results

3 all over the place. Issues with cellular

4 characterization. So we have tried to bring

5 together people to define how to move the field

6 forward. Same thing with cardiac cellular therapy.

7 One person over there, I don\'t remember

8 who, mentioned this issue of harmonization. I

9 think the global harmonization is an important

10 efficiency, as Janet replied, in product

11 development. It is an important cost saver and we

12 all support. It intersects with the science, for

13 example, in this later area; for example, providing

14 standards. We can\'t have global harmonization

15 unless we know that when somebody in Europe does an

16 adenovirus gene-therapy experiment, they are

17 talking about the same amount of adenovirus that we

18 are, when somebody in Europe makes a Factor VIII

19 concentrate, we know that it is the Factor VIII

20 standard we have all agreed on, and it is the same.

21 Those are the areas where we have really

22 focused some of our scientists\' efforts.

at 350

1 \[Slide.\]

2 So existing research programs within the

3 center have been focused increasingly towards this.

4 I think, as Janet said, we are all going to work to

5 be sure that we are doing as much as we can

6 efficiently with whatever resources we do have.

7 Many of these are directly connected to the\--we

8 have started a good database of this. We have

9 explored their connections to the applications and

10 products they are supporting.

11 One thing I was going to say is that we

12 are planning to use our advisory committees, for

13 example, to obtain broad scientific input about

14 opportunities in these fields. Are we looking at

15 the right things? So it is an extension of the

16 kind of input being got here for this.

17 I think, based on time, I am just going to

18 skip through these.

19 \[Slide.\]

20 I will just give a couple of examples of

21 things we already look at that really are critical

22 path. When I called up some of our industry about

at 351

1 their input into this initiative, I was very happy

2 to hear them say things like, well, that is what

3 you are doing. You know, we are having problems

4 manufacturing this vaccine and you are working with

5 us to figure out why this particular component of

6 this vaccine isn\'t working and you provide helpful

7 input.

8 So here are some examples; research and

9 toxicity. Why do have adenovirus. Lung toxicity;

10 why do we have toxicity from artificial blood

11 products. Assay validation for retroviruses, et

12 cetera.

13 \[Slide.\]

14 This is the model of lung toxicity due to

15 adenovirus. This helped focus on what, in future

16 adenovirus vectors in the animal studies should you

17 be looking for to predict toxicity.

18 \[Slide.\]

19 In the blood products, donor-derived blood

20 products carry considerable risk, have short

21 half-lives. Donors are often in limited supply.

22 People have been talking about, and working on,

at 352

1 blood substitutes for many, many years. There is

2 tremendous promise there but there have been a lot

3 of problems.

4 \[Slide.\]

5 This is just some examples of the physical

6 chemistry of the blood products. Some of these

7 have been associated with substantial toxicities,

8 particularly vasospasm, tissue damage. Again, we

9 have had a small group that has worked with the

10 developers of these products focusing on what is

11 the molecular basis of toxicity, identifying the

12 oxidative chemistry of the toxicity and developing

13 an in vitro model to screen products.

14 \[Slide.\]

15 This is an example where there is not a

16 lot of other investment through other sources in

17 this, whether industry or government. It has been

18 a small investigation but, again, we have heard

19 from the manufacturers. This has taught us where

20 to go with our next-generation products.

21 \[Slide.\]

22 Adventitious agents; Gail asked me to

at 353

1 comment on that and she saw it in the talk. But

2 this is increasingly a problem in biologics. We

3 have worked with people, developed a number of

4 assays. I will talk more about that.

5 \[Slide.\]

6 Product characterization is another area.

7 Again, I mentioned adenovirus standards, product

8 identity.

9 \[Slide.\]

10 I will give an example because of your

11 comment about\--I will linger on this for a second

12 because of your comment about genomics, et cetera.

13 It may not have immediate yield in terms of target,

14 but some of the same technologies may help us, for

15 example, characterize complex products. Cellular

16 therapies are an example. This is just a very

17 quick and superficial mention, because of time, of

18 work that Raj Puri, who is in the back, I think Dr.

19 Mahendra Rao from the Institute of Aging and a

20 number of other people may have contributed to.

21 \[Slide.\]

22 But, looking at stem cells and saying,

at 354

1 what is it that makes a stem cell at a

2 sophisticated genetic level and reasons for doing

3 this; safety concerns about unregulated growth,

4 being able to characterize them so that they are

5 reproducible for use in medical therapy.

6 When new stem-cell lines are developed,

7 how do we make sure that they really share the

8 genetic characteristics of stem cells, of having a

9 molecular vocabulary of what is a stem cell.

10 \[Slide.\]

11 This is just an example from their

12 microarray studies which identified a large number

13 of new genes associated with what we say, a

14 \"stemness.\" Now this is pretty early kind of

15 understanding of these things but this is an

16 example and I know one or two other laboratories

17 have looked and some of the genes they have found

18 are overlapping, too. But this helps define what

19 these populations are.

20 \[Slide.\]

21 Assays for product purity; we have done

22 potency, other methods development.

at 355

1 \[Slide.\]

2 I think efficacy is very important. Bob

3 Califf mentioned, and he and Janet had a little

4 thing about, surrogate markers. But certainly, in

5 many of our biologic products, particularly

6 vaccines, or clotting factors, there can be

7 excellent markers of efficacy but they are still

8 missing in lots and lots of very important

9 products. So, knowing what a protective antibody

10 resource is\--for instance, it is not my area so

11 Center for Drugs can get made at me, but it is

12 certainly my area clinically, in terms of

13 antibiotics. Knowing what kind of pharmacodynamic

14 models and compartment models might predict

15 effectiveness of an antibiotic could be very

16 important. Again, I am not going to go through all

17 these studies because of time.

18 Identifying what are the protective

19 antibodies, not just what are the levels but

20 actually what antibodies are protective; what kind

21 of T-cells are protective against different

22 diseases. If we know that, then you are not

at 356

1 talking about 10,000-person efficacy studies for

2 vaccines.

3 \[Slide.\]

4 And then statistical and epidemiological

5 analysis. Again, both Bobs touched on that.

6 \[Slide.\]

7 So, moving from that background where we

8 do a significant amount of this, and it is driven

9 by what people observe from the products and as

10 regulatory issues, what are some of the big

11 opportunities out there that ourselves or others

12 have looked at.

13 \[Slide.\]

14 Here are some examples. New vaccine

15 delivery systems. Rapid-use vectors so that, in

16 response to an emerging infectious disease or a

17 bioterrorist event, one could create a new vaccine

18 quickly and have some confidence about its efficacy

19 or the predictability of its efficacy or safety.

20 Making available well-characterized cell

21 banks for production of vaccines and other

22 biologics, characterized in terms of their safety

at 357

1 such as they don\'t cause cancer and their freedom

2 from adventitious agents. Again, these are

3 resources which are scattered in very limited

4 amounts throughout the field. There isn\'t a

5 library of resources or tools that one could say, I

6 have a new virus, SARS. I want to produce a

7 vaccine and cell line. I go to a partner like ATTC

8 or something and just take those off the shelf and

9 I know they are good with the FDA. They are safe,

10 and we don\'t have do two years of studies to figure

11 that out, or maybe ten years.

12 Characterize of cell therapies and links

13 to standardized outcomes. I have more about these.

14 How is my time?

15 DR. SHINE: You have about four or five

16 minutes.

17 DR. GOODMAN: That\'s tons of time.

18 Methods and validation for pathogen inactivation.

19 Multi-pathogen and rapid detection methodologies,

20 longevity and storage of blood and tissues.

21 \[Slide.\]

22 So I will just get down into the most

at 358

1 superficial details in a couple of these areas.

2 New delivery methods for vaccines and gene

3 therapies. As I said, we have got all these things

4 out there but there are all kinds of safety issues

5 that are holding up the field. How much residual

6 DNA is okay in a vaccine? Is DNA in a vaccine even

7 unsafe on any level? We don\'t know that. It is an

8 important area for study.

9 I mentioned new vaccine platforms.

10 Transgenic platforms. Adjuvants and immune

11 stimulants. Again, specific companies may have

12 these things and, the minute they encounter a

13 problem, unless it is absolutely essential for

14 their product development, they are going aside to

15 it. But there are probably things out there that

16 would be helpful to everyone if they were known to

17 be safe and effective.

18 \[Slide.\]

19 This is one I think is very important,

20 characterization of cellular products and links to

21 outcomes. You know, we have got multiple labs

22 making just amazing stuff, like the stuff Dr.

at 359

1 Langer said or like people are doing with stem-cell

2 experiments at my former university and elsewhere,

3 where they are taking things, they are hitting them

4 with growth factors, they are expanding them in

5 culture, but what are they?

6 When we have seven different labs doing

7 cardiac-cell therapy from the same source and they

8 exhibit different cell markers or\--what is working?

9 What doesn\'t work? We need to work with the

10 sponsors to collect the data from this in some kind

11 of standardized way with reasonable assays and

12 connect it to some kind of standardized clinical

13 outcomes so that we can predict and know that, when

14 you make a cellular therapy, this is a product that

15 is, indeed, what it is.

16 \[Slide.\]

17 I mentioned the cell substrates. I think

18 I have said enough about that, but I think there is

19 a real need for a more diverse bank of cell

20 substrates that have been well screened and

21 characterized. This is the kind of thing where\--I

22 feel like if a few really strong groups spent not

at 360

1 huge amounts of money over five years, we could

2 probably get this. But there is not enough there

3 for any one company, probably, to want to do these

4 or make that investment.

5 Again, it might be a consortium kind of

6 issue, or it might be something government can help

7 with or at least partner in or coordinate an effort

8 and everybody knows it is a level playing field.

9 \[Slide.\]

10 Very important things in emerging

11 infectious diseases. We spend so much of our time

12 trying to keep blood, and then our biologic

13 products substrates, tissues, which are going to be

14 increasingly\--we are moving forward with our Tissue

15 Rules which has been a long gestation process,

16 probably longer than the average elephant. But we

17 are moving forward with those things. We need

18 better technologies for dealing with this.

19 Like I said, with West Nile, it was great

20 but if, each year or two, we are having to add new

21 pathogens or take old ones out, we need even more

22 robust and better technologies. There are things

at 361

1 out there in terms of multi-pathogen testing, new

2 platforms, nanotechnology, or, for major remaining

3 problems with the blood supply, like bacterial

4 contamination, TSE.

5 We need blood and plasma products that,

6 ideally, as part of their process of manufacture,

7 are robustly inactivated for anything that might be

8 there that you don\'t even know it is there. So we

9 would like to say, when TSE came along, we know,

10 from the steps we are putting this through, that

11 prion agents are inactivated.

12 In fact, we have done some of those

13 studies. That is another perfect example of

14 studies that require specialized laboratories,

15 special equipment, benefit people across industry

16 and are usually very difficult, when we ask an

17 individual company to do them. Or how about to

18 develop better methods for inactivating prions.

19 Tissues; that is an industry that is just

20 in its infancy. But I wonder if people here

21 realize\--some of those numbers were on Dr. Langer\'s

22 screen, but our current belief is that up to a

at 362

1 million medical tissue transplants are done in a

2 year. These are tendons, cartilage, et cetera,

3 skin and we don\'t know how to safely decontaminate

4 tissue. It is basically not sterile. This is very

5 important stuff.

6 \[Slide.\]

7 I put this together under one rubric;

8 better, longer-lasting blood, cellular and tissue

9 products. How do we improve the shelf life of

10 blood. Right now platelets is a huge issue. We

11 have shortages of platelets. We have issues where

12 we can\'t test them for bacterial contamination

13 because, by the time the tests come back, they are

14 no good to use anymore. That is a little

15 overstatement, but it is there.

16 So, as these cells are increasingly used,

17 as we have some of the threats, in terms of

18 terrorism, war, et cetera, it becomes more

19 important to have a less fragile blood system. We

20 have a fragile blood system that is held together

21 by one or two people, I think, sometimes. But they

22 are great people.

at 363

1 Then data quality and analysis. This

2 isn\'t particularly my area of expertise but just to

3 add onto what both Bobs said. I think not only

4 could we do a better job about how we do studies,

5 how we collect data, but probably also how we

6 analyze it.

7 We have really tried to push, in the

8 vaccine area, for more use of large, simple trials.

9 We have to reexamine FDA\'s own practices here and

10 what messages we give about clinical trials and how

11 to do it more efficiently.

12 I will just leave it at that. Just to say

13 we thing FDA can be helpful in working with people

14 to identify opportunities and better tools and we

15 think the engagement, no matter\--we should be doing

16 this all the time. Again, as many of you have

17 said, we are very resource-constrained, but we view

18 this as part of what will improve the outcome we

19 are doing anyhow, which is to approve safety and

20 effective products.

21 Hopefully, with that, we can enhance

22 development of good products that people need. I

at 364

1 do think this is particularly important where

2 products present complex new technologies or maybe

3 don\'t always have huge economic incentives driving

4 research and development in those fields.

5 Thanks.

6 DR. SHINE: Jesse, thank you.

7 Questions and Discussion with the Board

8 Why don\'t you stay there because I have

9 got some questions for you and for Janet. I think

10 this is an opportunity to pull some things together

11 with regard to some of the material that we have

12 been talking about.

13 Let me start and I hope my colleagues will

14 jump in here. Both of you have demonstrated a

15 complex set of issues in terms of the science and

16 we are also faced with a complex set of players in

17 terms of dealing with it. So we are talking about

18 new science, new technology, standards, agreements

19 about procedures, and so forth. We are talking

20 about what the role should be of FDA in its own

21 laboratories, what FDA does in collaboration with

22 the NIH or other agencies, what FDA does in

at 365

1 relation to industry.

2 We have talked about a potential SemiTech

3 in terms of a public-private activity that might

4 involve, in this case, the pharmaceutical industry

5 doing some of these kinds of activities.

6 The question is, from a process point of

7 view, how would you propose priority setting in

8 this area, both in terms of the nature of the

9 problem and the question of who should do it,

10 because it seems to me that the issue here is not

11 that many people are sitting around here who

12 disagree about the need for this kind of knowledge

13 generation, but how do you go from the day-to-day

14 problems? You described the West Nile story.

15 Again, using the term ad hoc is probably not

16 totally accurate because of the past experience,

17 you solved a lot of problems in relation to an

18 unanticipated set of issues.

19 Yet, if we want to improve the path, that

20 means looking ahead and trying to do some strategic

21 things. So I wonder whether you have thoughts

22 about this, how you think about, if you had some

at 366

1 additional resources, what you would do as opposed

2 to what other people would be doing.

3 DR. GOODMAN: Right. And I would really

4 welcome Janet\'s comments, too. I would first start

5 by saying I think part of what we want to do is

6 open this dialogue and get input into where we

7 should be playing a role and what that role should

8 be.

9 I think all the partners are important. I

10 guess I would say that my\--and, again, I am

11 somebody who came to FDA from a different

12 environment, from academia and from having done

13 some industry-sponsored studies, so I think I have

14 a view not just from the FDA. I have a fairly

15 broad spectrum of the product-development endeavor,

16 although I haven\'t been directly in industry.

17 But what I was going to say is I

18 think\--and the document points this out. I think

19 that we do have a unique vantage point. We see

20 multiple products. For example, my gene and

21 cell-therapy reviewers see the twenty-something

22 cardiac-cell INDs and we sort of start to recognize

at 367

1 things that may not be in the literature, may not

2 be published. So sometimes, we can play a unique

3 role in identifying questions.

4 Sometimes, we can sort of help. It is

5 almost like an arranged marriage, the solving of

6 some of those questions. On the other hand, I

7 think that there is a spectrum\--this is so huge.

8 Just look at the few things highlighted in the few

9 talks here today both from inside and outside FDA.

10 Our ambitions to improve product

11 development are so huge that there is a large

12 spectrum of activity that should be brought to bear

13 on that. So, for example\--I mean, the West Nile is

14 an interesting example. So there NIH, at the one

15 spectrum, we had them work with us and they did

16 some developmental funding of one of the companies,

17 for example.

18 We provided standard and actual samples

19 and sort of library and resources and technologies

20 that would be able to be validated for the in vitro

21 diagnostics. CDC partnered with us in providing

22 samples in some of their methodology that they had

at 368

1 used in state labs, in their own labs.

2 So I think\--I am not trying to dodge the

3 thing. I think the answer to that would be I think

4 there is a lot more that could be done across the

5 spectrum. I think FDA could do a lot more and

6 could benefit from doing a lot more. I don\'t think

7 FDA should do that in a vacuum, in some cases\--for

8 example, in some of these ideas I discussed with

9 vaccine companies, they would say, we would want

10 you to do that, because actually they would want us

11 to do it because they would want this assay that,

12 then, they knew we would accept and make it

13 available to everyone. And it would be free of

14 politics and free of favoritism, hopefully, if we

15 did our job right.

16 But there might be other things, like in

17 cellular therapies, that should be\--FDA can\'t\--even

18 that little piece I laid out, we should be working

19 with all those investigators, the academic

20 organizations, the NIH, in the consortium model and

21 each person contributing in their area.

22 DR. SHINE: I would suggest to you that

at 369

1 the original concept of a roadmap was created by

2 the then President of Motorola. It was a roadmap

3 for accomplishing things in the semi-conductor

4 industry.

5 One of the issues is whether the agency,

6 in collaboration with industry and the academic

7 community, should consider a series of roadmaps in

8 product development in a number of areas and then,

9 having agreed on what that roadmap might look like

10 in terms of the elements in getting from here to

11 there, then agree on who takes responsibility for

12 the lead in a particular portion of that roadmap.

13 All I am saying is that I would like to

14 see us think about ways of implementing this that

15 are\--because of the very complexity you are talking

16 about, that we can move to the next step which is

17 how do you articulate that in a clear enough way so

18 that people can understand what they are trying to

19 buy into.

20 Let me throw things open to the rest of my

21 panel here and see if there are other comments, and

22 then I want to give Janet an opportunity to give a

at 370

1 benediction.

2 Susan?

3 DR. HARLANDER: I guess I would just

4 encourage you, and the problem is daunting, I

5 realize, but I think it is so critical to involve

6 all the stakeholders. I don\'t know what mechanisms

7 you do for that, because it is not just trade

8 associations. They represent a segment of the

9 industry and they don\'t represent academia at all,

10 probably. So I don\'t know how to involve that but

11 to recognize that there are a lot of stakeholders

12 and to get their input early.

13 And if there is an opportunity to identify

14 a cross-cutting fundamental area where you could do

15 a trial of getting academia and the private sector

16 and the public sector together to work on these

17 things\--can\'t take all of it on but there may be

18 some fundamental thing where you can assure

19 industry that they are not going to be taken down

20 because of\--I wrote it down and now I can\'t

21 remember\--that it is okay for them to collaborate

22 on these things from a government perspective.

at 371

1 DR. SHINE: I think doing some special

2 things in terms of dealing with the anti-trust\--

3 DR. HARLANDER: Anti-trust. I just

4 couldn\'t think of that; sorry.

5 DR. SHINE: \--are relevant. There are

6 ways to do that.

7 DR. HARLANDER: Yes.

8 DR. GOODMAN: That is way that FDA, I

9 think, can be helpful by sort of helping

10 orchestrate. Now, a caveat, and you all raised it,

11 it is the effort and resources that we can put into

12 this, and we frequently are doing this anyhow, for

13 example, with our colleagues and we would like to

14 do a lot more. But we are doing a lot of this in

15 terms of helping, for example, NIAID in its

16 development of counterterrorism products, but we

17 could do even more.

18 DR. CASSELL: Ken, I like your idea of a

19 roadmap. I actually have suggested that taking

20 maybe even just two therapeutic areas initially and

21 dissecting them in terms of trying to set

22 priorities, lay out the roadmap, and then you could

at 372

1 see what kind of overlap there might be between

2 even those two therapeutic areas, might be a

3 rational way to go.

4 Of course, I am biased, but I argued that

5 infectious diseases would be a natural because we

6 are faced with such urgency in terms of need. I

7 think you don\'t run into a lot of the anti-trust

8 issues that you might in such highly competitive

9 other arenas, say, in neurosciences or

10 cardiovascular because so many companies are not in

11 the area of anti-infectives today.

12 So it might be a natural. There is

13 already this new investment of \$1.7 billion at

14 NIAID for development of anti-infectives, so you

15 have got a lot going on in the public sector

16 already focused on drug development, how can we do

17 it better.

18 DR. SHINE: I would agree with Susan. We

19 are not talking just about government and industry,

20 for example, or government and industry and

21 academia. Consumers have a major stake in this

22 and they can keep a lot of this process honest in

at 373

1 terms of the various players.

2 DR. CASSELL: I would just add that the

3 Institute of Medicine, the Board on Health Science

4 Policy has just approved a series of fora on drug

5 development and drug discovery and issues. I think

6 that type of forum is also going to be very useful

7 for discussing some of these things and developing

8 a roadmap, maybe.

9 DR. SHINE: Good. Other comments?

10 Janet, I think the sense of the committee

11 is that this is a very important effort, that you

12 and your colleagues have articulated a

13 fundamentally important issue. It has a lot of

14 analogies to healthcare in the sense that we spent

15 decades delivering all kinds of goods but we never

16 wanted to study the process by which care is

17 provided. So, in this case, it is to study the

18 process by which products are developed, moved

19 forward, industrialized, as you put it, and so

20 forth.

21 So I think it is a very important area. I

22 think that the overall sense of the committee is

at 374

1 that this is an area that they would be very

2 strongly supportive of. I think the trick is going

3 to be, obviously, in the articulation of this into

4 a form\--you consult like crazy, but that is not

5 going to ultimately get you a workable structure.

6 All I am raising is, in one way or

7 another, and I think Gail is right; you pick one or

8 two or three areas and then you really look closely

9 at what are the steps that would be helpful over an

10 extended period of time. For example, we have

11 heard about four aspects of effective clinical

12 trials. Those could form part of the way in which

13 the clinical trials are done in that area.

14 We have heard about some innovative

15 approaches to thinking about devices. That could

16 be part of it, depending on what area you pick.

17 But I think the devil is going to be in structure

18 here so that people know where you want to go and

19 what the products are and who is responsible.

20 Again, I applaud you for at least considering some

21 of the models in other industries because I think

22 we have a lot to learn from those models in terms

at 375

1 of public-private activities.

2 I also think that one can make a strong

3 argument that investments in this area, and I think

4 we ought to make that argument\--that investments in

5 this area, through the Congress, through the

6 pharmaceutical industry, through other interested

7 players, could go a long way to improving

8 productivity.

9 I still want to see the overall\--I mean,

10 the last thirty years of drugs rather than the last

11 ten years just because I want to be sure that we

12 are not looking at just one part of a cycling

13 phenomenon. But I do think that one can make a

14 strong argument that solving some of these problems

15 would have enormous benefit to the industry and to

16 the public in a way that people may not have

17 thought about.

18 So just as it has been a tough sell to

19 sell health-services research, this is, if you

20 will, science services in the drug and device

21 industry.

22 Would you like to make any final comments?

at 376

1 DR. WOODCOCK: I want to thank the Board

2 for your attention. This is a starting-out area

3 and so it is a bit chaotic, I agree, because there

4 are so many factors. It is a very complex area.

5 It goes everywhere from characterization of viral

6 contamination of cell lines all the way to advanced

7 clinical-trial methodology.

8 I would reiterate, I think each one of

9 these is interconnected. I think Gail actually

10 said it the best; each barrier along the path,

11 wherever it might be in the development process, is

12 brought to bear in decisions that are made on what

13 is developed, or what is feasible, or how fields

14 are developed. So this ends up being really

15 impacting what healthcare products are delivered to

16 the public at the end of the day.

17 We will need your advice over a prolonged

18 period as we begin to shape this initiative. I

19 think you have given us some very important

20 guidance on making this real in the sense that we

21 need to lay out some paths. We need to reduce this

22 to, okay, what if we wanted to get this healthcare

at 377

1 product or this class of healthcare products more

2 efficiently in the hands of the doctors and

3 patients. Where are the barriers, an example or

4 two, is what you are talking about and then how

5 would people play on that and where would we see

6 different sectors contributing and that could help

7 make this much more real, is what I understand you

8 are saying, to everyone because it is so large and

9 complex and hard to bring together.

10 We will do that and, with your indulgence,

11 we will probably bring that back to you probably at

12 your next meeting.

13 DR. SHINE: I guess if you don\'t have

14 infectious disease on the list somewhere, Gail

15 will\--

16 DR. WOODCOCK: We\'re toast.

17 DR. SHINE: Any other final words from the

18 members of the committee. Then I think Dr.

19 Crawford wants to make a comment.

20 DR. CASSELL: I was just going to suggest

21 that, since we really don\'t meet again, as I

22 understand it, until December, or November. But

at 378

1 still it is a long way away. I think you have

2 gained a lot of momentum since this was announced

3 on March 16. I would hate to see you lose that so

4 I hope that you will feel free to get this group

5 involved. I don\'t know how we can do that or what

6 you are at liberty to do, but I think it would be a

7 good idea not to wait until November.

8 DR. SHINE: I would encourage you to think

9 about using e-mail on various aspects of this. A

10 number of us are very comfortable in working on

11 projects with other agencies and so forth over time

12 using e-mail. So, please don\'t hesitate to do that

13 in a way if you think we can be helpful to you in

14 any of these areas.

15 DR. WOODCOCK: Thank you. We do have an

16 extensive series of activities planned over the

17 spring and summer and we can definitely keep you

18 updated and even, perhaps, plan for substantive

19 input if we get to some critical points.

20 DR. SHINE: Dr. Crawford?

21 DR. CRAWFORD: Let me thank Ken and all

22 the committee for all your wise comments and

at 379

1 indulgence and attention today. Also, I would be

2 remiss if I didn\'t thank Janet personally for what

3 she has done to pull all this together. Ken

4 mentioned earlier that she is a widely known

5 innovator and that is certainly the case. This is

6 going to take a lot of hard work and, as Susan

7 said, a lot of interaction with the stakeholders,

8 but also with individual members of this committee.

9 You know, I can promise you that we will

10 stay in touch over the spring, fall and winter, as

11 we go forward.

12 The other thing I would want to say is

13 that the idea of the critical path is getting, in

14 fact, a lot of traction on Capital Hill. We have

15 begun making some courtesy visits with important

16 key members of the U.S. Congress. They are all

17 key, some are more key than others, perhaps. But

18 also these have been included in our speeches and

19 some other sorts of public interactions that we are

20 making.

21 I think it, by now, is an easily

22 understood concept on the surface. As we move

at 380

1 forward, I think we are going to be able to get

2 resources here. I also think it is going to give

3 us a lot better interaction along functional lines

4 with NIH and other sister organizations and brother

5 organizations that we deal with.

6 This is a big thing for FDA. As I

7 mentioned in my opening remarks, something like

8 this has been mentioned usually along the lines of

9 science-based future for FDA and so forth. But

10 this puts legs and gives a structure to it and we

11 are all very enthused about it. You can count on

12 us to wage a good fight with your help.

13 Thanks very much.

14 DR. SHINE: Thank you. If there is no

15 other business, we are adjourned.

16 \[Whereupon, at 4:40 p.m., the meeting was

17 adjourned.\]

18 - - -