Af­ter hint­ing it was ex­plor­ing the le­gal­i­ty of the FDA’s ap­proval of a ri­val drug from fam­i­ly-run com­pa­ny Ja­cobus Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, Cat­a­lyst Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals on Wednes­day filed a law­suit against the health reg­u­la­tor — ef­fec­tive­ly ac­cus­ing the agency of bow­ing to po­lit­i­cal pres­sure sur­round­ing sky­rock­et­ing drug prices.

Patrick McE­namy Twit­ter

Be­fore Cat­a­lyst’s Fir­dapse (which car­ries an av­er­age an­nu­al list price of $375,000) was sanc­tioned for use in Lam­bert-Eaton myas­thenic syn­drome (LEMS) by the FDA, hun­dreds of pa­tients had been able to ac­cess a sim­i­lar drug from com­pound­ing phar­ma­cies for a frac­tion of the cost, or Ja­cobus’ for free, as part of an FDA-rat­i­fied com­pas­sion­ate use pro­gram. But the ap­proval of the Cat­a­lyst drug — ac­com­pa­nied by mar­ket ex­clu­siv­i­ty span­ning sev­en years — ef­fec­tive­ly pre­clud­ed Ja­cobus and com­pound­ing phar­ma­cies from sell­ing their ver­sions.

Then, in an un­ex­pect­ed twist, weeks ago the FDA en­dorsed New Jer­sey-based Ja­cobus’ ver­sion in pe­di­atric pa­tients, on the ba­sis of adult da­ta — a move that could spark off-la­bel pre­scrip­tion in adults (As far as the FDA is con­cerned, doc­tors can pre­scribe drugs for off-la­bel use when they judge that it is med­ical­ly ap­pro­pri­ate for their pa­tient). Cat­a­lysts’ shares $CPRX sank on the an­nounce­ment and have not since re­vived. Adding fu­el to the fire, ear­li­er this week Ja­cobus re­vealed its drug, Ruzur­gi, will car­ry a list price that is less than half of Fir­dapse’s.

Cat­a­lyst main­tains that typ­i­cal­ly, cov­ered pa­tients pay less than $10 per month out-of-pock­et.

In LEMS pa­tients, the body’s own im­mune sys­tem launch­es an at­tack on the neu­ro­mus­cu­lar junc­tion — which con­nects nerves and mus­cles. The con­di­tion is as­so­ci­at­ed with oth­er au­toim­mune dis­eases, but tends to oc­cur in pa­tients with can­cer. Glob­al­ly it is es­ti­mat­ed to af­fect three per mil­lion in­di­vid­u­als, ac­cord­ing to the FDA, but its pe­di­atric preva­lence is not clear. Cat­a­lyst sug­gest­ed there are 3,000 LEMS US pa­tients, of which 300 are on Fir­dapse. Some es­ti­mates sug­gest there are few­er than three dozen pe­di­atric pa­tients in the Unit­ed States.

Un­der fed­er­al law, the agency is meant to treat all com­pa­nies in the same man­ner. Cat­a­lyst has as­sert­ed the agency un­der­mined the com­pa­ny’s or­phan drug ex­clu­siv­i­ty, and vi­o­lat­ed fed­er­al law by play­ing fa­vorites in con­text of a hy­per­vig­i­lant pric­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

The ap­proval let­ters for Cat­a­lyst and Ja­cobus sug­gest that while the for­mer sub­mit­ted a body of clin­i­cal tri­al ev­i­dence as part of the pack­age the FDA re­viewed, the lat­ter did not sub­mit da­ta from cer­tain tox­i­col­o­gy stud­ies. In­stead, the FDA has asked Ja­cobus to pro­vide these da­ta as a post-mar­ket­ing re­quire­ment.

“We felt that the FDA’s ap­proval of Ruzur­gi was ar­bi­trary, capri­cious and not in ac­cord with the Food, Drug & Cos­met­ic Act,” Cat­a­lyst chief Patrick McE­nany told End­points News. 

“We be­lieve the FDA was im­prop­er­ly in­flu­enced in mak­ing this de­ci­sion by po­lit­i­cal pres­sures with re­gard to high drug pric­ing and we think it sets a hor­ri­ble prece­dent for oth­er com­pa­nies work­ing to de­vel­op drugs to treat rare dis­eases — it could in fact dis­cour­age com­pa­nies from in­vest­ing mil­lions of dol­lars and spend­ing many years to do this,” he said.

Ear­li­er this year, Ver­mont Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders — ahead of his an­nounce­ment to make a sec­ond at­tempt at the pres­i­den­cy — spot­light­ed Cat­a­lyst for the “im­moral ex­ploita­tion of pa­tients.”

McE­nany em­pha­sized that Cat­a­lyst has spent more than $100 mil­lion dol­lars in de­vel­op­ing the drug over the last sev­en years — and that his hope is the law­suit will cul­mi­nate in the with­draw­al of the Ruzur­gi ap­proval.

An FDA spokesper­son said the agency does not com­ment on pend­ing lit­i­ga­tion. End­points News has con­tact­ed Ja­cobus for com­ment.

Im­age: An­drew Harnik, AP Im­ages

Janet Woodcock may have one of the most historically long and drug-intense tenures in FDA history, but her new role is outside of all things pharma and the once-acting FDA commissioner isn’t looking back.

“No I really don’t look back,” Woodcock told Endpoints News via email on Monday morning. “Yes I will be transitioning. Longer discussion on infrastructure needed.”

Pfizer has agreed to pay $290,000 to settle allegations of questionable copay coupon practices in Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, and Vermont from 2014 to 2018.

While the company has not admitted any wrongdoing as part of the settlement, Pfizer has agreed to issue restitution checks to about 5,000 consumers.

A Pfizer spokesperson said the company has “enhanced its co-pay coupons to alleviate the concerns raised by states and agreed to a $30,000 payment to each.”

A judge in Delaware has ruled against Astellas Pharma and Gilead in a long-running patent case over Pfizer-onwed Hospira’s generic version of Lexiscan.

The case kicked off in 2018, after Hospira submitted an Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) for approval to market a generic version of Gilead’s Lexiscan. The drug is used in myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI), a type of nuclear stress test.

The area of Ireland famous for Blarney Castle and its cliffsides along the Atlantic Ocean is seeing Merck KGaA expand its commitment there.

The German drug manufacturer is expanding its membrane and filtration manufacturing capabilities in Ireland. The company will invest approximately €440 million ($470 million) to increase membrane manufacturing capacity in Carrigtwohill, Ireland, and build a new manufacturing facility at Blarney Business Park, in County Cork, Ireland.

Twenty House Democrats, including Reps. Katie Porter of California and Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, are calling on Senate leaders to move quickly with a reconciliation bill (meaning they only need a simple majority for passage) with prescription drug pricing reforms, and to include adding new authority for Medicare to negotiate drug prices.

They also called on the Senate to specifically follow suit with the House passage of a $35 per month insulin cap (as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s deadline for a vote on that provision has come and gone), and to cap Medicare Part D costs at $2,000 per year for seniors.

As the cases of monkeypox now sit at well over 100 worldwide and have spread to multiple continents, the orders for any type of vaccine against monkeypox are seeing nations and medical bodies looking to get their hands on anything and everything. And now SIGA Technologies seems to be getting in on the action.

According to Euronews, SIGA Technologies, a pharmaceutical company that is focused on providing medical countermeasures to biological and chemical attacks, is now in talks with several European authorities looking to stockpile its antiviral that can counter monkeypox. The drug known as tecovirimat or Tpoxx was approved by the FDA in 2018 as a vaccine for smallpox but was approved by the European Medicines Agency to also act against monkeypox, cowpox and complications from immunization with vaccinia.

Bristol Myers Squibb is bringing new life to a chemotherapy drug from the old Celgene pipeline as it touts another approval in a rare form of blood cancer affecting young children.

The FDA on Friday approved Vidaza (chemically known as azacitidine) for pediatric patients 1 month and older with newly diagnosed juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia (JMML). The new indication marks the first approval for Vidaza in more than a decade, though it’s commonly used to treat acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS).

The FDA on Monday said it updated its recommendations for the clinical development of new antibacterial drugs, and thanks to a new clutch of drugs, sponsors will have to conduct noninferiority trials that include subjects with infections caused by certain drug-resistant organisms because an effective active control can be provided.

The guidance, which is likely to be released within the next day or so, builds on a 2017 document and specifies what noninferiority trial designs may be used “with a wider NI margin,” including cases in which the trial population is enriched for subjects with infections caused by certain drug-resistant organisms, FDA said.