CDER chief Janet Wood­cock has a mes­sage for phar­ma: 'It’s not work­ing, and it won’t work in the fu­ture'

At a time when the phar­ma in­dus­try’s rep has been scrap­ing its way to the very bot­tom of the bar­rel with the US pub­lic, ex­ecs are al­so now in for some bru­tal crit­i­cism from the FDA’s pow­er­ful CDER chief, Janet Wood­cock.

“I don’t want to bum every­one out,” Wood­cock told a bio­phar­ma crowd late last week. “The sci­ence is fab­u­lous, but that’s not enough.”

Speak­ing at the Break­throughs in Med­i­cine con­fer­ence spon­sored by The Los An­ge­les Times, Wood­cock cas­ti­gat­ed a sys­tem that now of­fers ex­tra­or­di­nary new meds — some of which can cure dis­eases — at prices that are far be­yond the reach of many pa­tients. And she tar­get­ed the cur­rent drug de­vel­op­ment process, ac­cus­ing com­pa­nies of putting a pre­mi­um on se­cre­cy — dri­ving up the cost of re­search while steer­ing clear of study­ing im­por­tant as­pects of the drug when there is no clear com­mer­cial gain to be had.

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