WASHINGTON — Food and Drug Administration officials said they have started several new initiatives in response to the Institute of Medicine's call to upgrade and overhaul its drug safety efforts. The projects, including a pilot project to more closely monitor the postmarketing safety of four new molecular entities and a plan to put more postmarketing data on the agency's Web site, were revealed at a meeting sponsored by the IOM.
In a September 2006 report that lambasted FDA's safety oversight, the IOM called on the agency to issue an interim report on selected drugs' postmarketing safety at least 18 months, and no longer than 5 years, after launch. “I think 5 years is too late to find out what a drug is doing,” said Dr. Robert Temple, associate director for medical policy at the FDA.
The FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) has begun a pilot project with four new molecular entities to pull together all available data at 1, 2, and 3 years after launch. Officials will look at the Adverse Events Reporting System database, ongoing postmarketing studies, and other data to see how much can be learned about each particular drug at each time point, said Dr. Temple. He would not disclose which drugs are part of the pilot.
The FDA also plans to publish a newsletter on its Web site that will provide up-to-date information on a drug's postmarketing experience, said Dr. Ellis Unger, acting deputy director for science at CDER's Office of Surveillance and Epidemiology.
He promised a full accounting but noted that the agency will not disclose any proprietary information.
The IOM report also urged Congress to give the FDA greater and more precise enforcement powers, partly to compel pharmaceutical manufacturers to fulfill their commitments to gather postmarketing data.
Peter Barton Hutt, a former FDA general counsel, said that most companies comply with FDA requests because “industry is terrified of FDA.” Mr. Hutt said FDA had all the enforcement power it needed already. He argued that the agency did, however, need more funding outside of the user fees it collects.
FDA critics have said the agency is unduly beholden to industry because of user fees. Former FDA Deputy Commissioner Mary Pendergast noted that those fees were likely to make up 80% of the agency's drug review and safety budget if Congress did not provide additional money for fiscal 2007.
She also noted that as of fiscal 2006, companies had 1,632 pending postmarketing commitments. The number of studies being requested is on the rise, said Ms. Pendergast, noting that the average was 1.5 per approved drug before 2003 and 5 per approved drug in 2003–2004. In the most recent report to Congress (fiscal 2006), 63% of those studies had not been started, she said.