# Presentation: 037150

## A patient’s perspective on user fees

- Perry D Cohen PhD
- Parkinson Pipeline Project
- November 14, 2005

## Parkinson’s Disease

- Chronic degenerative neurological condition characterized by the loss of  dopamine producing neurons in a small area in the mid brain.
- Dopamine is a neuro transmitter that controls movement, and is associated with mood and motivation
- Patients have a variety of cognitive and emotional symptoms as well as autonomic function problems in addition to motor symptoms

- PDUFA Reauthorization

- Nov. 14, 2005

## PD Treatment and Cure

- Good news: many effective treatments for PD
- Bad news: treatment may stop working after 5-10 years, and side effects can be as bad as the symptoms treated
- Good news: more known about PD than any other brain disease and the recent big build up in science already has us on path toward better treatment and cures promised right around the corner
- Bad news: the pipeline to develop and test a cure can be 15-20 years more and is tangled with financial markets, business strategies, organizational politics, careers, publication schedules and other non-scientific factors that slow or block effective treatments from emerging

- PDUFA Reauthorization

- Nov. 14, 2005

## What Patients Want

- “Faster Cures” with reasonable safety profile
- Time is not neutral for someone with a serious or life threatening illness
- Priority on addressing more significant systemic delays in advancement of science and medicine as well as review time
- Individual assessment of risk-benefit tradeoff with full information and counsel of a physician
- Need recognition that equation is different for each
- Need recognition that no treatment is risk free
- Collaboration with researchers and sponsors to ascertain full benefits as well as risks of new therapies

- PDUFA Reauthorization

- Nov. 14, 2005

## PDUFA Background

- PDUFA was established to reduce the length of time used by FDA to review applications by adding review staff with fees paid by industry.
- FDA provides to industry extensive consultation and guidance on regulatory process, study designs, and outcome measures
- FDA agrees to meet performance standards for timeliness of meetings and reviews
- Little or no input from patients and consumers on PDUFA legislation or on-going reviews.

- PDUFA Reauthorization

- Nov. 14, 2005

**Notes:**
My understanding of the past user fee legislation

## A patient’s perspective on user fees.From the outside looking in

- New therapy development is a black box to the public
- Little information on steps and timeframes in the process
- No opportunity to observe the inner workings of the review process or other processes
- User fees have grown to pay for more than half of all review costs
- Questions are raised about appearance of less objectivity of FDA rulings given this dependence.
- A technical point: fees are only paid when an NDA is submitted, yet costs to FDA to provide advice to sponsors are incurred throughout.
*	**<With many more research discoveries generating new therapeutic ideas, this payment schedule may discourage NDA’s while it subsidizes earlier phase activity.>*

- PDUFA Reauthorization

- Nov. 14, 2005

**Notes:**
Advocates don’t know when a meeting is held or whether it is held.  Companies that mislead the public about what happens at meetings or even what is discussed

A couple of simple observations on general

## Untapped Resources:New Roles for Patients

- Patient Advocate roles have been cultivated by FDA, Office of Special Health Initiatives, which has recruited and trained
- patient representatives for advisory groups
- patient consultants for pre-approval reviews
- The appearance of an FDA bias toward needs of industry would be countered with more active roles for patients in the process
- For example Parkinson’s patient consultants have been added to the oncology consultant program

- PDUFA Reauthorization

- Nov. 14, 2005

**Notes:**
Alternatives to the perception-appearance of collusion

## Transparent Process

- Information would provide hope for patients and motivation to collaborate with sponsors and researchers
- New PDUFA legislation should specify procedures to make the approval process more transparent.
- Community groups such as the Parkinson Pipeline Project track new therapies with information cobbled from press reports, discussions with scientists, and ultimately with research participants
- FDA should expand excellent efforts of OSHI to provide information and support to community groups that educate the public about regulatory processes.

- PDUFA Reauthorization

- Nov. 14, 2005

## The Voice of the Patient

*“**The missing ingredient in new therapy development is the voice of the patient.* “
- Patients as partners in clinical research
- Patient input to risk benefit judgments
- Research participants’ “Bill of Rights”
- PDUFA should recognize patient roles and rights

- PDUFA Reauthorization

- Nov. 14, 2005

**Notes:**
Roles patients can play

## Systems Issues

- Review times are a small fraction of the total development time. The entire pipeline should be examined for time savings.
- System changes are necessary to achieve significant reductions in the duration of the pipeline and maintain the quality of the science.
- For example, scientific data must be shared
- Increase the turnaround time for feedback on research results
- Reduce the shield for protection of proprietary information that inhibits free flow of ideas and impedes scientific progress.

- PDUFA Reauthorization

- Nov. 14, 2005

## Challenging Assumptions

- Government leaders recognize systemic problems and the need to allocate resources to enhance clinical research methodology
- FDA Critical Path Initiative
- NIH Translational Research “roadmap”
- Business as usual is not sufficient
- Science as usual is not sufficient
- “Faster Cures” is a program that examines usual assumptions about the pace of science to try new configurations that can dramatically shorten development timeframes.

- PDUFA Reauthorization

- Nov. 14, 2005

**Notes:**
Development of better treatments and cures are governed by financial markets, business strategies, organizational politics, careers, publication schedules and other non-scientific factors that can facilitate development or impede effective treatments from emerging 

Research physicians are normally governed by academic norms with lengthy timeframe for grant writing, peer review, university and government administration, research process, preparation of publication, more peer review, and information dissemination.

## Continuous Quality Improvement

- Greater regulatory authority and tools are needed by FDA to manage post marketing surveillance and safety monitoring, such as
- Measured incentives and sanctions to encourage companies to perform required studies,
- Adding post marketing studies into activities covered by PDUFA funding.
- Utilization of growing resources in Electronic Medical Records and health information technology to monitor safety.
- Greater control of initial marketing and follow-up studies as markets expand could reduce delays for the initial approvals due to uncertainty of the findings
- allow seriously ill patients greater access to potential life saving treatment.

- PDUFA Reauthorization

- Nov. 14, 2005

**Notes:**
After approval, the incentive to continue to evaluate a  treatment is often too low to initiate or complete needed follow up studies or to conduct surveillance of safety and efficacy of new therapies