API and IP Newsletter
Contents
Development pipeline of Zydus Lifesciences Limited
We follow imports of many generic pharma companies and try and evaluate their development portfolio and development strategy.
This week we analysed import of Zydus Lifesciences Limited.
As per published news Zydus Lifesciences is planning to spend over 8% on research and development in FY24 with its major expenses going towards innovative portfolio. The R&D investments for the Q4FY23 stood at Rs 354.1 crore, translating into 7.1% of revenues.
Below is glimpse of our analysis regarding intermediate imports.
General information
US FDA approves expanded use of Mirum's liver disease drug
The health regulator's approval for the drug, branded as Livmarli, allows it to be used for treating itching caused by progressive familial intrahepatic cholestasis (PFIC), a genetic disorder that causes progressive liver disease typically leading to liver failure.
News here.
US FDA approves BeiGene's esophageal cancer therapy
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it has approved BeiGene's drug to treat a type of advanced esophageal cancer in patients who have previously received chemotherapy.
The therapy, branded as Tevimbra, was approved as a monotherapy for adult patients with unresectable or metastatic esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.
News here
Intellectual Property
Massachusetts Laborers’ Health & Welfare Fund (Fund) vs Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Boehringer Ingelheim international GmbH,
Boehringer Ingelheim was accused in a federal lawsuit in Boston for improperly submitting patents to the USFDA to delay generic competition and inflate prices for its lung disease drugs Combivent Respimat and Spiriva Respimat.
Combivent Respimat and Spiriva Respimat are both drug-device combinations. Combivent Respimat is a combination of two medicines: ipratropium bromide (an anticholinergic) and albuterol sulfate (a beta2-adrenergic agonist). It is approved for the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (or COPD)
Spiriva Respimat, which contains an anticholinergic called tiotropium bromide, is approved as a once-daily maintenance treatment for the symptoms of COPD, and as a maintenance treatment for asthma in patients over five years old.
Accusations of Massachusetts Laborers’ health & welfare fund (Fund) are as follows.
Boehringer sells both medicines in its proprietary inhaler, the Respimat. But that was not always the case. Both products are tweaks to older products on which Boehringer has already enjoyed many years of monopoly profits at a rate of billions of dollars a year.
For half a century, Boehringer has sold products containing ipratropium bromide. For almost thirty years, it has sold a product combining ipratropium bromide and albuterol sulfate, called Combivent. And for nearly twenty years, Boehringer enjoyed monopoly profits over a tiotropium bromide product called Spiriva for a long time the company’s best-selling product which only finally faced generic competition this year.
But Boehringer was not satisfied with its astounding profits on Combivent, Spiriva, and its other related products. So, in the early 2000s, it developed a new “soft mist” inhaler to seek approval for a new product, and thwart the generic competition it knew was approaching.
Boehringer’s older products were all sold in a standard “metered dose” inhaler, a common design used by dozens of drug companies to dispense hundreds of other respiratory drug products. Several such inhalers are available in the public domain, and so once a generic drugmaker developed its own version of the medication inside of Boehringer’s Combivent and Spiriva, the USFDA approval of generic drug competition would not be far behind.
Boehringer designed an inhaler that looks different and in which the medication cannister is seated differently. Whereas most standard inhalers have an L-shaped design, which holds the cannister of medication upright during administration, the Respimat device was designed so that the medication cannister was held horizontally while dispensing the drug. This was not a difference intended to confer some medical benefit on patients.
The purpose of the Respimat device’s different design was its patentability. Boehringer obtained patents claiming this Respimat device none of which validly claimed the drug substances ipratropium bromide, tiotropium bromide, or albuterol sulfate or the drug products in Combivent Respimat and Spiriva Respimat and then used those patents to block generic competitors from eroding its multi-billion dollar sales on its Combivent and Spiriva franchises.
Listing a patent in the Orange Book has important implications on competition. A drugmaker seeking to introduce an affordable generic version of an expensive brand-name drug, like Combivent Respimat or Spiriva Respimat, must either await the expiration of all listed patents, or else certify to the FDA that it believes the patents are invalid or not infringed by the proposed generic drug.
A long list of patents in the Orange Book may deter a generic company from even beginning the drug development process. But even if a generic applicant opts to challenge the patents, the mere fact of the patent listings may delay generic competition.
Boehringer has hijacked this pro-generic legal and regulatory framework, and repurposed it to delay generic competition
By the time the FDA approved Combivent Respimat, any patents over ipratropium bromide or albuterol sulfate (or the combination of ipratropium bromide and albuterol sulfate) had long since expired.
Boehringer should have faced robust generic competition for Combivent Respimat in or around February 2020. When the FDA approved Spiriva Respimat, Boehringer had only a few remaining patents that claimed the drug tiotropium bromide and those expired in 2020.
To extend the monopoly Boehringer improperly submitted twenty-three patents to the FDA for listing in the Orange Book as claiming Combivent Respimat, Spiriva Respimat, or both. Six of those patents remain listed today.
The complaint said that such patents have given drugmakers "unconscionably long exclusivity periods, far in excess of what the FDA ever envisioned." It said that Boehringer changed its delivery system for Combivent and Spiriva from generic inhalers to Respimat so it could "improperly stuff the Orange Book" with device patents to maintain exclusivity over the drug and patients.
The fund said that Spiriva Respimat costs nearly $600 in the U.S. but ranges from $21 to $54 in Germany, France, Japan, Canada and the UK.
This device-switch strategy was an intentional effort to stretch patent exclusivity for much longer than Boehringer could lawfully claim for its legacy drugs.
The Fund requested that the Court enter judgment in their favor and grant the following relief:
Treble or at least double damages under the applicable state laws;
Compensatory and punitive damages;
Appropriate equitable and injunctive relief;
Court costs and reasonable attorneys’ fees;
Prejudgment and post-judgment interest; and
Any further relief the Court deems proper and just.
Jury trial was demanded. We will follow this case keep readers updated time to time.
Case here
