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 Retarded FDA relents in battle against a cruel disease

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CovOps

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Retarded FDA relents in battle against a cruel disease Vide
PostSubject: Retarded FDA relents in battle against a cruel disease   Retarded FDA relents in battle against a cruel disease Icon_minitimeTue Apr 22, 2014 4:27 am

For much of last fall and winter and into this spring, scientists at the Food and Drug Administration wavered over what to do about a potential new drug to slow the progression of Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a devastating disease that overwhelmingly affects boys, leaving most in wheelchairs by their teens and dead in their 20s.


In a clinical trial involving 12 boys, the drug appeared to have halted physical decline. That gave hope to parents desperate for a treatment, but regulators expressed skepticism about the reliability of the study's results.

Convinced that this drug could succeed where others had failed, the families of patients mounted an aggressive campaign to pressure the FDA. They argued that it was up to the agency to decide whether their sons would be the last generation of boys to die from Duchenne, or the first to survive. They hired a public relations firm and bombarded Facebook and Twitter, posted online YouTube videos of boys benefiting from the drug, rounded up more than 100,000 signatures for an official White House petition, visited lawmakers on Capitol Hill and made their case to top FDA officials in a series of face-to-face meetings.

On Monday, Massachusetts-based Sarepta Therapeutics disclosed that while the FDA reiterated its earlier skepticism regarding data surrounding the drug, eteplirsen, the agency has detailed a potential path forward for the drug and indicated a willingness to consider it for accelerated approval. That news came five months after the FDA had told Sarepta that it would be "premature" for the company to seek approval and suggested that Sarepta might first need to conduct a larger trial, which could mean years of delay.

The company, whose stock soared by 40 percent Monday, said it plans to file a new drug application with the agency and will push forward with a larger "confirmatory" study that will allow more boys access to eteplirsen and give regulators more robust data about its safety and effectiveness.

"This provides the opportunity to get the drug approved and in the hands of all the boys who can benefit from it sometime in 2015," Chris Garabedian, Sarepta's chief executive, said in an interview. "I think that's a huge win for the [Duchenne] community and for Sarepta."

While the FDA action doesn't guarantee approval, the development brought relief and joy to many Duchenne families and put eteplirsen a step closer to becoming the first treatment for the disease, which affects about 15,000 boys in the United States.

But difficult questions remain, and they go beyond any one drug:
How does the FDA balance its traditional role of ensuring that drugs that reach the market are both safe and effective with the obvious urgency to make treatments available to children facing a fatal disease? How much weight should the agency give to the voice of parents and patients, who often are willing to shoulder outsize risks? Should the FDA go ahead and approve promising drugs if it isn't convinced they will work over the long term, knowing they will cost patients and insurers hundreds of thousands of dollars a year?

"It's a big dilemma," said Louis Kunkel, a Harvard geneticist who is credited with discovering the gene behind Duchenne and who has aided in the search for a cure. "I've waffled on my opinion of this. If you listen to the families, they make a good argument why this should be available. . . . [But] how well it's working is an academic argument that hasn't been settled yet. And I think that's where the hesitancy of the FDA is. . . . It's an extremely hard thing."

For its part, the FDA seems to be walking a careful line with eteplirsen. Regulators have made clear that they still harbor doubts even as they give Sarepta a chance to make its case without requiring a larger study before initial approval. On Monday, the agency said only that it recognizes "the devastating nature of the disease on patients and their families" and is working with patient groups and pharmaceutical companies to make effective Duchenne drugs available as soon as possible.

For many parents of children with Duchenne, the case seems clear-cut: Eteplirsen is producing results, they say. And though questions remain about exactly why, it's better to go ahead and treat boys who are dying while scientists parse the particulars.

More:  http://newsok.com/fda-relents-in-battle-against-a-cruel-disease/article/feed/676579
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CovOps

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Female Location : Ether-Sphere
Job/hobbies : Irrationality Exterminator
Humor : Über Serious

Retarded FDA relents in battle against a cruel disease Vide
PostSubject: Re: Retarded FDA relents in battle against a cruel disease   Retarded FDA relents in battle against a cruel disease Icon_minitimeTue Apr 22, 2014 4:28 am

New drug gives hope for patients with Duchenne


WASHINGTON -- Terri and Bill Ellsworth of Coraopolis expected their son to be in a wheelchair by now. Instead, 13-year-old Billy is hiking, jogging and dancing thanks to an experimental drug that's helping him and 11 other boys in a clinical trial for a drug to treat Duchenne, a rare and fatal form of muscular dystrophy mainly affecting boys.

The drug is helping all of them and it has no significant side effects, but the country's other 20,000 boys with Duchenne can't receive it because it hasn't yet gotten approval from the Food and Drug Administration.

Drug developers and Duchenne parents, who have been frustrated by the FDA's stop-and-go approval process, got a dose of good news Monday.

Approval of the new intravenous drug eteplirsen is still uncertain, but the FDA has offered a potential path forward for the drug.

More:  http://www.post-gazette.com/news/health/2014/04/22/New-drug-gives-hope-for-patients-with-Duchenne/stories/201404220058
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