How FDA Plans to Help Consumers Capitalize on Advances in Science
July 7, 2017
By: Scott Gottlieb, M.D.
FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD
We’re at a point in science where new medical technologies hold out the promise of better treatments for a widening number of vexing conditions. Over the last few decades, science has enabled fundamental advances in our understanding of the genetic and protein bases of human disease. These developments are already being translated into new medicines. In more cases, these treatments target the underlying mechanisms that drive different diseases. These advances hold out the promise of arresting and even curing a growing number of diseases.
To build upon such opportunities, FDA will soon unveil a comprehensive Innovation Initiative. It will be aimed at making sure our regulatory processes are modern and efficient, so that safe and effective new technologies can reach patients in a timely fashion. We need to make sure that our regulatory principles are efficient and informed by the most up to date science. We don’t want to present regulatory barriers to beneficial new medical innovations that add to the time, cost, and uncertainty of bringing these technologies forward if they don’t add to our understanding of the product’s safety and benefits.
This imperative is driven by our mandate to promote the public health. It includes a responsibility to make sure that we’re taking steps, within the scope of our existing responsibilities, to also help facilitate access to new innovations once FDA approves them. Access to advances in medical care is a critical component of public health. And the price of new technology affects the ability of people to access these new treatments. We therefore need to be mindful of the costs of our regulatory processes, to the degree that these costs also affect the availability of new innovations, and the way that they are ultimately priced.
New medical innovations are ultimately priced to a measure of the cost of the capital it takes to develop these technologies. This is true not only when it comes to the direct costs of research and development. Cost is also a function of the time and uncertainty of these endeavors.
For these reasons, as part of our public health mandate, we need to make sure that we’re taking a risk-based approach in everything we do. The 21st Century Cures Act gave FDA many new authorities and resources to accomplish this mission. “Cures” provides FDA with tools aimed at modernizing our regulatory programs. The goal of many of these efforts is to make sure that we’re taking every appropriate step to facilitate access to safe and effective new innovation.
Today we announced our detailed work plan for the steps we’re taking to implement different aspects of Cures. I want to highlight one example of these steps, which we’re investing in, and will be expanding on, as part of our broader Innovation Initiative. It’s the use of in silico tools in clinical trials for improving drug development and making regulation more efficient.
In silico clinical trials use computer models and simulations to develop and evaluate devices and drugs. Modeling and simulation play a critical role in organizing diverse data sets and exploring alternate study designs. This enables safe and effective new therapeutics to advance more efficiently through the different stages of clinical trials. FDA’s efforts in modeling and simulation are enabled through multiple collaborations with external parties that provide additional expertise and infrastructure to advance the development of these state-of-the-art technologies.
FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) is currently using modeling and simulation to predict clinical outcomes, inform clinical trial designs, support evidence of effectiveness, optimize dosing, predict product safety, and evaluate potential adverse event mechanisms. We’ll be putting out additional, updated guidance on how aspects of these in silico tools can be advanced and incorporated into different aspects of drug development.
A variety of drug development, regulatory, and therapeutic questions are addressed by CDER through modeling and simulation strategies. CDER’s Office of Translational Sciences (OTS) uses these same strategies in the review of Investigational New Drugs Applications (INDs) and New Drug Applications (NDAs). To take just one example of the benefits of these approaches, as we enter an era of drug individualization, modeling and simulation that incorporates aspects of individual physiology and genetics in drug metabolizing enzymes is being used to identify patient subgroups that need dose adjustments. These approaches are incorporated to assess the combined effect of drug interactions, renal impairment, and hepatic insufficiency in patients, with clinical management strategies described in drug labeling where appropriate.
Another example is the use of modeling and simulation to assist in the creation of natural history databases to support model-based drug development. This could make clinical trials more efficient—for example, by enabling FDA to model some aspects of the behavior of the placebo arm in clinical trials. Right now, FDA is collaborating with scientists to develop such natural history models in Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and muscular dystrophy. An important objective of modeling and simulation is to better evaluate the behavior of new treatments in rare disease populations that are inherently hard to study due to their small size.
To advance these opportunities, we need to continue to invest in high performance computing. These computing capabilities are becoming a key requirement to the ability of our review staff to manipulate the large data sets that are now a common feature of drug applications. FDA is actively working to expand the agency’s capabilities in high performance computing, and to explore modeling approaches and enhance their regulatory impact, through an effort enabled by the work of the agency’s Scientific Computing Board.
FDA’s device center is also an integral part of this work. The Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) is also building in silico regulatory models for product design and evaluation, including the development of a digital library of models and a family of “virtual patients” for device testing. An important goal is consistency. We need to make sure that the adoption of these strategies is consistent across different medical products and across the agency.
FDA is working hard to maximize the authorities and resources Congress granted us to advance medical innovation for patients. To ensure smooth coordination and communication across the agency, we established an intra-agency Cures Steering Committee. Since enactment of the nearly 1,000-page law on December 13, 2016, the team has conducted a detailed analysis of the law’s provisions, compiled a list of all of its FDA-related requirements, and is helping to advance the work teams that will enable FDA to deliver on the law’s opportunities. Today, we’re posting an initial list of our Cures deliverables. It will eventually become a tracking tool to help the public follow our progress.
As you can see from the list, we’ve already implemented several important Cures provisions. Section 1002 of Cures authorized $500 million in new funding over 9 years to help FDA cover the cost of implementing certain parts of the law. Consistent with the law’s requirements, we developed a draft work plan demonstrating how FDA would use that funding, subject to annual appropriations. We submitted the draft work plan to FDA’s Science Board for its consideration at a public meeting in May. Today we’re posting the final work plan that we delivered to Congress on June 9th. It includes the recommendations from FDA’s Science Board.
Among some of the other noteworthy actions that we’re pursuing under Cures:
- Our Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) is implementing the Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy, or RMAT designation. This new process provides another pathway to access FDA’s existing expedited programs, and is available for certain cell therapies, therapeutic tissue engineering products, and certain combination products. The goal of these efforts is to help foster the development and approval of these novel products. We’ve already received almost two dozen requests for RMAT designation and granted four such designations to date. To continue to advance these opportunities, we’ll be announcing this September a comprehensive framework for the development and proper FDA oversight of regenerative medicine. This new policy effort will comprise a series of new guidance documents covering many aspects of the regulation of regenerative medicine products. It will be announced as part of our Innovation Initiative. It will delineate our policies for appropriate and efficient regulatory oversight of regenerative medicine products, in order to demonstrate their safety and effectiveness. It will also create an accessible framework that will enable providers to more easily collaborate on proving these principles for regenerative products that are advanced within local medical institutions. We want to help facilitate these scientific advances, which hold out tremendous potential for treating and even curing diseases. To achieve these goals, we need to make sure that we have a modern regulatory framework in place that can allow innovators to meet the statutory requirements for demonstrating safety and effectiveness.
- The newly established Oncology Center of Excellence is the first inter-center institute at FDA that focuses on a specific disease area rather than type of product. It’s designed to take advantage of the synergies that can be achieved by coordinating the clinical review of products across FDA’s drug, device, and biologic centers to make the development of oncology and hematology medical products more efficient. This new center will allow our expert review staff to work together and take a life-cycle approach to the development and post-market regulation of new cancer treatment options.
- Under provisions of Cures, CDRH exempted more than 70 Class I device types from the requirement to submit to FDA a 510(k) submission. CDRH also proposed exempting another 1,000+ Class II device types from having to submit a 510(k) submission based on an initial determination that premarket review is not necessary to provide a reasonable assurance of safety and effectiveness. This action will decrease regulatory burdens on the device industry and eliminate private costs and expenditures.
- To further align our regulatory requirements with the provisions of Cures, CDRH also amended its current regulations to allow more devices to qualify for a humanitarian device exemption for small patient populations. We’ll allow researchers to seek approval for device clinical trials through a central institutional review board rather than mandating the use of local review boards. Under the provisions of Cures, CDRH has also published the list of reusable device types for which FDA will require validated instructions for use and validation data regarding cleaning, disinfection, and sterilization in 510(k)s. These new requirements go into effect on August 8, 2017.
- Finally, last month CDER, working with CBER, issued a plan for the development and issuance of patient-focused drug development guidances. The workshops and the new guidance will set forth our plan to facilitate a more systematic approach to gathering and using patient perspectives to inform FDA’s regulatory decision-making.
We’re at the beginning of a transformative era in science and medical technology. Through our implementation of Cures, and our efforts to build on its provisions through a new Innovation Initiative, we hope that our collective efforts will help consumers benefit from this new progress. FDA’s headway in pursuing the opportunities enabled by Cures illustrates the agency’s enthusiasm and commitment to the law—both its letter and its spirit. Please bookmark the Cures web page and our tracker to follow our progress as we work to vigorously advance these shared goals.
Scott Gottlieb, M.D., is Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration