This hearing, at which stakeholders will provide suggestions to the agency on opportunities to improve the biosimilar and interchangeable product market, is a part of the FDA’s broader mission to protect and promote public health by fostering greater competition. The agency is seeking presentations from interested entities on how to accomplish the following:

1. Facilitate the development of biosimilar and interchangeable products using state-of-the-art science
2. Develop information resources, as well as scientific or regulatory tools, to streamline the development of biosimilar and interchangeable products
3. Enhance the efficiency of FDA marketing application review
4. Provide additional scientific or regulatory clarity regarding FDA’s biological products regulation processes
5. Increase healthcare provider, patient, and payer understanding of biological products, including biosimilars and interchangeable products
6. Support market competition by addressing attempts to game FDA requirements or otherwise delay market entry of competing biologic products

The FDA is also seeking industry feedback on additional steps it can take to support a sustainable, competitive, and multisource biologic product market. They look to accomplish this by encouraging the development of more biosimilars more efficiently through regulatory clarity and better communications to consumers and healthcare providers, while taking steps to prevent regulatory gaming. Some of these comment opportunities include: enhancing patient access, boosting provider and pharmacist confidence and familiarity with these products, and reducing developmental costs related to sample sizes for the analytical studies of difficult-to-source reference products.

The FDA has also stated that many current guidance documents are being considered for updates, including the recently rescinded draft guidance, “Statistical Approaches to Evaluate Analytical Similarity.” Commissioner Gottlieb has also mentioned finalizing the draft guidance, “Considerations in Demonstrating Interchangeability with a Reference Product,” which was issued in January 2017.

The public hearing will be held on September 4, 2018, and electronic or written comments will be accepted until September 21. The hearing agenda will become available on August 30.

To learn more about how you can engage in this public hearing, connect with us.