This would be a good time for biopharma companies to review their ongoing clinical trials to determine whether any investigators involved in the study are vulnerable to potential disqualification proceedings by the Food & Drug Administration.All signs point to a crackdown coming from the agency, likely to take the form of a spate of proceedings to disqualify individual investigators from participating in clinical trials.
That in turn means a big headache for any drug sponsors that relied on those investigators in pivotal trials of their drugs—any trial those investigators participated in, not just one that prompts a fraud investigation.
What tea leaves are we reading? How about these comments by the Center for Drug Evaluation & Research’s Office of Compliance director Deborah Autor, who told the Food & Drug Law Institute’s annual Enforcement & Litigation Conference yesterday that the Division of Scientific Investigations is “becoming more activist. I think that they are really gaining momentum in what they do from an enforcement context.”
The agency is working on “streamlining” the process involved in disqualifying clinical investigators when FDA uncovers fraudulent or violative practices, Autor said. She acknowledged that the process currently is “Byzantine” and slow-moving—a fact that works to the benefit of investigators facing potential disqualification.
“The agency is working to clean up those procedures,” she told the audience, adding the wry observation that “I’m not so sure this is good from your standpoint.”
Autor’s comments verify the observations of two attorneys sharing the dais with her—Douglas Farquhar of Hymen Phelps & McNamara and Philip Katz of Hogan and Hartson—who sense greater urgency and a tougher stance from the agency in cases involving clients potentially facing disqualification.
A crackdown on investigators accused of fraud would hardly be surprising, given the recent round of hearings and Congressional reports focusing on claims that FDA failed to take action quickly enough to respond to allegations of fraud in clinical trials of the antibiotic Ketek.
We won’t rehash all the allegations here. Suffice it to say that there is bipartisan concern that FDA is not sufficiently vigilant in overseeing the conduct of clinical trials. The debate on the Hill focuses on whether FDA needs new enforcement powers (the subject of the most recent Ketek hearing in the House) or simply needs to use its current enforcement authority more aggressively (as recommended in a report by Republican Representative Joe Barton).
Any move by FDA to step up disqualification proceedings against investigators means headaches for industry.
It's not just the individual accused of fraud or that investigator's clinical center that suffers in a disqualification proceeding, Katz pointed out. “What you then quickly get to is: what do we do with the data that this disqualified clinical investigator has been involved with?”
And it “is not just the data in the study that was the subject that led FDA to the disqualification proceeding,” Katz said, “but also other data with which that investigator was affiliated. That becomes suspect as well.”
In some cases, there may be nothing sponsors can do to avoid the taint—except hope that their clinical trial findings are robust enough to support safety and efficacy even if the investigator’s site is excluded from the analysis of the trial.
But sponsors can also prepare by double checking whether their investigators have been cited by the agency in public inspection documents (known as FDA 483 reports) or, even more critically, in warning letters from the agency. Those are warnings signs that an individual may be vulnerable in an enforcement crackdown.
Autor added that the agency is not relying on enforcement alone, but is working to modernize its overall regulatory approach to clinical trial monitoring.
“The regs, as everybody knows, are outdated and don’t really fit the way trials are done today,” she said. “Hopefully, over time you will see that changing so that clinical trials will really be subject to appropriate regulation for how they are conducted today.” The goal will be “putting the onus on sponsors and monitors to ensure quality in clinical trials.”
That may sound like yet another regulatory burden on drug development (and it is), but if the alternative is a series of enforcement actions that knock out individual trial sites from multiple applications at a time, this may be a case where industry has a lot to gain from moving to a new regulatory model.
What tea leaves are we reading? How about these comments by the Center for Drug Evaluation & Research’s Office of Compliance director Deborah Autor, who told the Food & Drug Law Institute’s annual Enforcement & Litigation Conference yesterday that the Division of Scientific Investigations is “becoming more activist. I think that they are really gaining momentum in what they do from an enforcement context.”
The agency is working on “streamlining” the process involved in disqualifying clinical investigators when FDA uncovers fraudulent or violative practices, Autor said. She acknowledged that the process currently is “Byzantine” and slow-moving—a fact that works to the benefit of investigators facing potential disqualification.
“The agency is working to clean up those procedures,” she told the audience, adding the wry observation that “I’m not so sure this is good from your standpoint.”
Autor’s comments verify the observations of two attorneys sharing the dais with her—Douglas Farquhar of Hymen Phelps & McNamara and Philip Katz of Hogan and Hartson—who sense greater urgency and a tougher stance from the agency in cases involving clients potentially facing disqualification.
A crackdown on investigators accused of fraud would hardly be surprising, given the recent round of hearings and Congressional reports focusing on claims that FDA failed to take action quickly enough to respond to allegations of fraud in clinical trials of the antibiotic Ketek.
We won’t rehash all the allegations here. Suffice it to say that there is bipartisan concern that FDA is not sufficiently vigilant in overseeing the conduct of clinical trials. The debate on the Hill focuses on whether FDA needs new enforcement powers (the subject of the most recent Ketek hearing in the House) or simply needs to use its current enforcement authority more aggressively (as recommended in a report by Republican Representative Joe Barton).
Any move by FDA to step up disqualification proceedings against investigators means headaches for industry.
It's not just the individual accused of fraud or that investigator's clinical center that suffers in a disqualification proceeding, Katz pointed out. “What you then quickly get to is: what do we do with the data that this disqualified clinical investigator has been involved with?”
And it “is not just the data in the study that was the subject that led FDA to the disqualification proceeding,” Katz said, “but also other data with which that investigator was affiliated. That becomes suspect as well.”
In some cases, there may be nothing sponsors can do to avoid the taint—except hope that their clinical trial findings are robust enough to support safety and efficacy even if the investigator’s site is excluded from the analysis of the trial.
But sponsors can also prepare by double checking whether their investigators have been cited by the agency in public inspection documents (known as FDA 483 reports) or, even more critically, in warning letters from the agency. Those are warnings signs that an individual may be vulnerable in an enforcement crackdown.
Autor added that the agency is not relying on enforcement alone, but is working to modernize its overall regulatory approach to clinical trial monitoring.
“The regs, as everybody knows, are outdated and don’t really fit the way trials are done today,” she said. “Hopefully, over time you will see that changing so that clinical trials will really be subject to appropriate regulation for how they are conducted today.” The goal will be “putting the onus on sponsors and monitors to ensure quality in clinical trials.”
That may sound like yet another regulatory burden on drug development (and it is), but if the alternative is a series of enforcement actions that knock out individual trial sites from multiple applications at a time, this may be a case where industry has a lot to gain from moving to a new regulatory model.
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