In case you thought Covid-19 had slowed down US Food and Drug Administration’s New Drug Approvals, you’re in for a pleasant surprise — the FDA appears to be more active than ever before. By the end of June, the FDA had already approved 33 new drugs which put the approval activities within the ballpark of the past two years — 62 novel drugs were approved in 2018, while 54 were approved in 2019.
FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) approved 25 new molecular entities and new therapeutic biological products, of which almost half — 12 out of 25 — were oncology drugs, while the rest of
the novel therapies were approved by the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.
The European Medical Agency (EMA) was also busy as the regulator issued a positive opinion for 41 drugs, of which 27 were classified as novel treatments.
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Conditional Approval for Gilead’s Remdesivir
Gilead’s Remdesivir has
certainly been one of the most talked about drugs
this year. While it is still under clinical evaluation, the FDA, EMA and the
Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) found ways of providing
market access to this drug as a treatment against Covid-19.
On May 1, 2020, based on the totality of
scientific evidence available to the FDA, the
agency issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), as it believed
that remdesivir may be effective
in treating Covid-19 and that the known and
potential benefits of remdesivir, when used to
treat Covid-19, outweigh the known and potential risks of such products.
On June 25, 2020, EMA’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) adopted a positive opinion, recommending the granting of conditional marketing authorization for Veklury (remdesivir).
The demand for remdesivir is such that the US bought more than 500,000 doses, which is all of Gilead’s production for July and 90 percent of production for August and September, leaving almost
no stock of remdesivir for the UK and Europe.
In 127 poor or middle-income countries, Gilead
is allowing generic drugmakers to supply remdesivir. It has signed non-exclusive voluntary licensing
agreements with generic pharmaceutical manufacturers based in Egypt, India and
Pakistan to further expand the supply of the antiviral drug.
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Vertex’s Kaftrio bags EMA approval
Earlier this year, PharmaCompass published its compilation of the sales forecasts for the new drugs approved by the FDA in 2019. The list was led by Vertex’s cystic fibrosis treatment — Trikafta — which is expected to have sales of US$ 3.935 billion by 2024.
Trikafta is a combination of ivacaftor, tezacaftor and elexacaftor and its stellar clinical data made the FDA approve the drug within three months of Vertex’s application filing and five months before FDA’s action date.
In June 2020, EMA’s CHMP adopted a positive opinion, recommending the granting of a marketing authorization for Vertex’s combination which will be marketed as Kaftrio.
EMA also adopted positive opinions on other
drugs which were previously approved by the FDA in
2019, such as Novartis’ Zolgensma and Piqray, Pfizer’s Staquis and Daurismo among many
others.
Immunomedic’s antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) — Trodelvy (sacituzumab govitecan-hziy) — was approved by the FDA for the treatment of adult patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer who have received at least two prior therapies for metastatic disease. Trodelvy follows remdesivir in our list of FDA approved drugs in 2020 with the highest sales potential. The current forecast for Trodelvy sales is US$ 2.151 billion by 2026.
FDA’s approval of Lundbeck’s Vyepti (eptinezumab) and Biohaven’s Nurtec ODT (rimegepant) for migraine
headaches brought additional CGRP-targeted products to the market. It will be
interesting to see how Nurtec ODT is accepted given it is a small molecule
drug, which makes administration easier. It was
recently promoted on social media by Khloe Kardashian.
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Covid-19 impacts drug launches
The pandemic has, however, started taking a
toll on drug launches. One of the most anticipated drug approvals of the year, Bristol-Myers Squibb’s multiple sclerosis (MS) treatment — Zeposia (ozanimod) — was approved in both the US and Europe. However, the launch of the drug would
be delayed due to the coronavirus outbreak.
The drug was added to BMS’s portfolio through its US$ 74 billion acquisition of Celgene last year. Its
approval was one of the three conditions set for a potentially higher payout
for Celgene investors.
Analysts have high hopes from ozanimod. Its
average peak sales for 2024 have been predicted to be at US$
1.62 billion by Cortellis, though the Covid-19 pandemic may weigh in there
as well.
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First non-statin cholesterol drug bags
FDA approval
This year also witnessed the first non-statin
treatment to be cleared for sale in the US in nearly 20 years. The drug, bempedoic acid, is made by Esperion Therapeutics Inc. This cholesterol-lowering drug is aimed at
helping millions of people who can’t tolerate or don’t get enough help from widely used statin pills like Lipitor and Crestor.
This new drug is to be used as an add-on treatment with statins. It lowers bad
cholesterol or low-density lipoprotein (LDL) by inhibiting its synthesis in the
liver. It targets patients with high cardiovascular risk.
Esperion also won approval of bempedoic acid
in combination with ezetimibe, another
cholesterol-lowering drug.
In January last year, Daiichi Sankyo Europe had entered into an exclusive licensing agreement with Esperion Therapeutics for Daiichi Sankyo Europe to market
bempedoic acid and bempedoic acid/ezetimibe combination tablet in the European
Economic Area and Switzerland.
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Approvals not granted to almost 20 drugs
There were setbacks too, and not everything
rolled smoothly. This year, almost 20 drug approvals were not granted. Among
the major setbacks were Bristol Myers Squibb and bluebird bio, Inc announcing
that they have received a Refusal to File letter from the FDA regarding the Biologics License
Application (BLA) for their CAR-T therapy, idecabtagene vicleucel (ide-cel), for patients with heavily pre-treated
relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma, which was
submitted in March 2020.
Upon preliminary
review, the FDA determined that the Chemistry, Manufacturing and Control (CMC)
module of the BLA requires further detail to complete the review. No additional
clinical or non-clinical data have been requested or are required.
Two years after Intarcia Therapeutics received
a CRL for its matchstick-sized, long-term drug
implant for type 2 diabetes, the FDA issued a second CRL to the company for its ITCA-650 implant. The
implant is designed to be a small, osmotic pump which can be slipped under the
skin and deliver a continuous, six-month dose of the
GLP-1 agonist exenatide.
The FDA also did not approve Intercept Pharmaceuticals’ obeticholic acid to treat NASH (or
nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, a liver condition in
which the buildup of fat
progressively scars the organ), as it wasn’t convinced that its benefits outweighed the potential risks.
After acquiring Allergan for US$ 63
billion, one of the first drugs which AbbVie was expecting
approval for was Abicipar pegol, their experimental DARPin therapy for patients with neovascular (wet) age-related macular degeneration (nAMD). However, FDA’s review indicated the rate of intraocular inflammation observed following administration of Abicipar pegol 2mg/0.05 mL
results in an unfavorable benefit-risk ratio in the treatment of wet AMD.
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Our view
While everyone’s attention is on the Covid-19 pandemic, the industry is certainly busy working towards getting new drugs to market. At the halfway mark, the FDA and EMA seem to be on track to set approval records this year, since the number of drugs approved by June are almost twice the number that were approved at the same time last year.
However, it remains to be seen how companies adapt their sales and marketing strategies in a world where mobility is likely to get restricted and interpersonal contact is set to reduce dramatically.
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