Special FDA designations for drug development: orphan, fast track, accelerated approval, priority review, and breakthrough therapy.
Over the past decades, US Congress enabled the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to facilitate and expedite drug development for serious conditions filling unmet medical needs with five special designations and review pathways: orphan, fast track, accelerated approval, priority review, and breakthrough therapy.
This study reviews the FDA's five special designations for drug development regarding their safety, efficacy/clinical benefit, clinical trials, innovation, economic incentives, development timelines, and price.
We conducted a keyword search to identify studies analyzing the impact of the FDA's special designations (orphan, fast track, accelerated approval, priority review, and breakthrough therapy) on the safety, efficacy/clinical benefit, trials, innovativeness, economic incentives, development times, and pricing of new drugs. Results were summarized in a narrative overview.
Expedited approval reduces new drugs' time to market. However, faster drug development and regulatory review are associated with more unrecognized adverse events and post-marketing safety revisions. Clinical trials supporting special FDA approvals frequently use small, non-randomized, open-label designs. Required post-approval trials to monitor unknown adverse events are often delayed or not even initiated. Evidence suggests that drugs approved under special review pathways, marketed as "breakthroughs", are more innovative and deliver a higher clinical benefit than those receiving standard FDA approval. Special designations are an economically viable strategy for investors and pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs for rare diseases with unmet medical needs, due to financial incentives, expedited development timelines, higher clinical trial success rates, alongside greater prices. Nonetheless, patients, physicians, and insurers are concerned about spending money on drugs without a proven benefit or even on drugs that turn out to be ineffective. While European countries established performance- and financial-based managed entry agreements to account for this uncertainty in clinical trial evidence and cost-effectiveness, the pricing and reimbursement of these drugs remain largely unregulated in the US.
Special FDA designations shorten clinical development and FDA approval times for new drugs treating rare and severe diseases with unmet medical needs. Special-designated drugs offer a greater clinical benefit to patients. However, physicians, patients, and insurers must be aware that special-designated drugs are often approved based on non-robust trials, associated with more unrecognized side effects, and sold for higher prices.
Michaeli DT
，Michaeli T
，Albers S
，Boch T
，Michaeli JC
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The US Orphan Drug Act: rare disease research stimulator or commercial opportunity?
This study investigates issues associated with the United States Orphan Drug Act.
A comprehensive orphan drug database was compiled from FDA data and corporate annual reports of major pharmaceutical companies. Analysis allowed the generation of a descriptive orphan drug portrait as well as documentation of orphan drugs along their lifecycle.
Currently, 2002 products have obtained orphan drug designation with 352 drugs obtaining FDA approval. Approximately 33% of orphan drugs are oncology products. On average, products obtain 1.7 orphan designations with approximately 70% obtaining a single designation. At least 9% of orphan drugs have reached blockbuster status with two-thirds having two or more designations. An additional 25 orphan drugs had sales exceeding US$ 100 million in 2008 alone. Since 1983, at least 14 previously discontinued products have been recycled as orphan drugs.
The United States Orphan Drug Act has created issues which, in some cases, have led to commercial and ethical abuses. Orphan Drug Act reform is necessary but current incentives, including 7 year market exclusivity, should be maintained in order to favour patients as well as economic prosperity. Suggested reforms include price regulation, subsidy paybacks for profitable drugs and the establishment of an International Orphan Drug Office.
Wellman-Labadie O
，Zhou Y
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Novel Treatments for Rare Cancers: The U.S. Orphan Drug Act Is Delivering-A Cross-Sectional Analysis.
Rare cancers are a heterogeneous group of conditions with highly unmet medical needs. Although infrequent in individuals, rare cancers affect millions of people who deserve effective treatments. Therefore, we systematically analyzed the impact of the U.S. Orphan Drug Act of 1983 on delivery of novel treatments for rare cancers.
Quantitative cross-sectional analysis was conducted on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Orphan Drug Product database according to Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology Statement criteria between 1983 and 2015.
Since 1983, a total of 177 approvals have originated from 1,391 orphan drug designations to treat rare cancers, which represents 36% of all approvals within the U.S. orphan drug act (n = 492). Two compounds (1%) to treat rare cancer were withdrawn after approval. Median time from designation to approval was 2.49 years (interquartile range 1.13-4.64) and decreased significantly over time (p < .001, linear regression). Over the last decade, rare cancer treatments have been transformed from nonspecific cytotoxic agents toward targeted therapies, such as protein kinase inhibitors and monoclonal antibodies, representing the largest groups of innovative rare cancer treatments today. Most compounds were approved to treat solid tumors and hematological malignancies.
The U.S. Orphan Drug Act and associated incentives, such as 7 years of marketing exclusivity, have fostered delivery of novel treatments for rare cancers. More than one-third of all orphan drug approvals address needs of patients suffering from rare cancers. Over the last decade, the understanding of tumorigenesis and genetic driver mutations in different tumor entities has produced innovative treatments, of which many were first approved within the U.S. Orphan Drug Act.
Over the last 30 years, the U.S. Orphan Drug Act successfully delivered numerous novel treatments for rare cancers, of which some were subsequently used in other, nonorphan indications. The understanding of molecular mechanisms of diseases is directly connected to the search for novel therapies. The constant pursuit to translate basic research findings into clinical practice is a crucial prerequisite to address unmet medical needs in rare cancers, as in other rare diseases. Oncological drug development proves to be a major player in overall orphan drug research, displayed by more than one-third of all U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved orphan drugs with oncological indications.
Stockklausner C
，Lampert A
，Hoffmann GF
，Ries M
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ResearchGate
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