[Federal Register Volume 90, Number 114 (Monday, June 16, 2025)]
[Notices]
[Pages 25336-25338]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2025-11024]
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DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Food and Drug Administration
[Docket Nos. FDA-2023-E-3263 AND FDA-2023-E-3264]
Determination of Regulatory Review Period for Purposes of Patent
Extension; BRIUMVI
AGENCY: Food and Drug Administration, HHS.
ACTION: Notice.
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SUMMARY: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA or the Agency) has
determined the regulatory review period for BRIUMVI and is publishing
this notice of that determination as required by law. FDA has made the
determination because of the submission of applications to the Director
of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Department of
Commerce, for the extension of a patent which claims that human
biological product.
DATES: Anyone with knowledge that any of the dates as published (see
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION) are incorrect must submit either electronic
or written comments and ask for a redetermination by August 15, 2025.
Furthermore, any interested person may petition FDA for a determination
regarding whether the applicant for extension acted with due diligence
during the regulatory review period by December 15, 2025. See
``Petitions'' in the SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION section for more
information.
ADDRESSES: You may submit comments as follows. Please note that late,
untimely filed comments will not be considered. The https://www.regulations.gov electronic filing system will accept comments until
11:59 p.m. Eastern Time at the end of August 15, 2025. Comments
received by mail/hand delivery/courier (for written/paper submissions)
will be considered timely if they are received on or before that date.
Electronic Submissions
Submit electronic comments in the following way:
Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov.
Follow the instructions for submitting comments. Comments submitted
electronically, including attachments, to https://www.regulations.gov
will be posted to the docket unchanged. Because your comment will be
made public, you are solely responsible for ensuring that your comment
does not include any confidential information that you or a third party
may not wish to be posted, such as medical information, your or anyone
else's Social Security number, or confidential business information,
such as a manufacturing process. Please note that if you include your
name, contact information, or other information that identifies you in
the body of your comments, that information will be posted on https://www.regulations.gov.
If you want to submit a comment with confidential
information that you do not wish to be made available to the public,
submit the comment as a written/paper submission and in the manner
detailed (see ``Written/Paper Submissions'' and ``Instructions'').
Written/Paper Submissions
Submit written/paper submissions as follows:
[[Page 25337]]
Mail/Hand Delivery/Courier (for written/paper
submissions): Dockets Management Staff (HFA-305), Food and Drug
Administration, 5630 Fishers Lane, Rm. 1061, Rockville, MD 20852.
For written/paper comments submitted to the Dockets
Management Staff, FDA will post your comment, as well as any
attachments, except for information submitted, marked and identified,
as confidential, if submitted as detailed in ``Instructions.''
Instructions: All submissions received must include the Docket Nos.
FDA-2023-E-3263 AND FDA-2023-E-3264 for ``Determination of Regulatory
Review Period for Purposes of Patent Extension; BRIUMVI.'' Received
comments, those filed in a timely manner (see ADDRESSES), will be
placed in the docket and, except for those submitted as ``Confidential
Submissions,'' publicly viewable at https://www.regulations.gov or at
the Dockets Management Staff between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday through
Friday, 240-402-7500.
Confidential Submissions--To submit a comment with
confidential information that you do not wish to be made publicly
available, submit your comments only as a written/paper submission. You
should submit two copies total. One copy will include the information
you claim to be confidential with a heading or cover note that states
``THIS DOCUMENT CONTAINS CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION.'' The Agency will
review this copy, including the claimed confidential information, in
its consideration of comments. The second copy, which will have the
claimed confidential information redacted/blacked out, will be
available for public viewing and posted on https://www.regulations.gov.
Submit both copies to the Dockets Management Staff. If you do not wish
your name and contact information to be made publicly available, you
can provide this information on the cover sheet and not in the body of
your comments and you must identify this information as
``confidential.'' Any information marked as ``confidential'' will not
be disclosed except in accordance with Sec. 10.20 (21 CFR 10.20) and
other applicable disclosure law. For more information about FDA's
posting of comments to public dockets, see 80 FR 56469, September 18,
2015, or access the information at: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2015-09-18/pdf/2015-23389.pdf.
Docket: For access to the docket to read background documents or
the electronic and written/paper comments received, go to https://www.regulations.gov and insert the docket number, found in brackets in
the heading of this document, into the ``Search'' box and follow the
prompts and/or go to the Dockets Management Staff, 5630 Fishers Lane,
Rm. 1061, Rockville, MD 20852, 240-402-7500.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Beverly Friedman or Jack Dan, Office
of Regulatory Policy, Food and Drug Administration, 10903 New Hampshire
Ave., Bldg. 51, Rm. 6250, Silver Spring, MD 20993, 240-402-6940.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
I. Background
The Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984
(Pub. L. 98-417) and the Generic Animal Drug and Patent Term
Restoration Act (Pub. L. 100-670) generally provide that a patent may
be extended for a period of up to 5 years so long as the patented item
(human drug or biologic product, animal drug product, medical device,
food additive, or color additive) was subject to regulatory review by
FDA before the item was marketed. Under these acts, a product's
regulatory review period forms the basis for determining the amount of
extension an applicant may receive.
A regulatory review period consists of two periods of time: a
testing phase and an approval phase. For human biological products, the
testing phase begins when the exemption to permit the clinical
investigations of the biological product becomes effective and runs
until the approval phase begins. The approval phase starts with the
initial submission of an application to market the human biological
product and continues until FDA grants permission to market the
biological product. Although only a portion of a regulatory review
period may count toward the actual amount of extension that the
Director of USPTO may award (for example, half the testing phase must
be subtracted as well as any time that may have occurred before the
patent was issued), FDA's determination of the length of a regulatory
review period for a human biological product will include all of the
testing phase and approval phase as specified in 35 U.S.C.
156(g)(1)(B).
FDA has approved for marketing the human biologic product BRIUMVI
(ublituximab-xiiy). BRIUMVI is indicated for the treatment of relapsing
forms of multiple sclerosis, to include clinically isolated syndrome,
relapsing-remitting disease, and active secondary progressive disease,
in adults. Subsequent to this approval, the USPTO received patent term
restoration applications for BRIUMVI (U.S. Patent Nos. 9,234,045 and
9,873,745) from TG Therapeutics Inc. (Agent of Laboratoire Francais du
Fractionnement et des Biotechnologie S.A.), and the USPTO requested
FDA's assistance in determining the patents' eligibility for patent
term restoration. In a letter dated January 30, 2024, FDA advised the
USPTO that this human biological product had undergone a regulatory
review period and that the approval of BRIUMVI represented the first
permitted commercial marketing or use of the product. Thereafter, the
USPTO requested that FDA determine the product's regulatory review
period.
II. Determination of Regulatory Review Period
FDA has determined that the applicable regulatory review period for
BRIUMVI is 3,920 days. Of this time, 3,463 days occurred during the
testing phase of the regulatory review period, while 457 days occurred
during the approval phase. These periods of time were derived from the
following dates:
1. The date an exemption under section 505(i) of the Federal Food,
Drug, and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 355(i)) became effective: April 6,
2012. FDA has verified the applicant's claim that the date the
investigational new drug application became effective was on April 6,
2012.
2. The date the application was initially submitted with respect to
the human biological product under section 351 of the Public Health
Service Act (42 U.S.C. 262): September 28, 2021. FDA has verified the
applicant's claim that the biologics license application (BLA) for
BRIUMVI (BLA 761238) was initially submitted on September 28, 2021.
3. The date the application was approved: December 28, 2022. FDA
has verified the applicant's claim that BLA 761238 was approved on
December 28, 2022.
This determination of the regulatory review period establishes the
maximum potential length of a patent extension. However, the USPTO
applies several statutory limitations in its calculations of the actual
period for patent extension. In its applications for patent extension,
this applicant seeks 1,129 days or 1,500 days of patent term extension.
III. Petitions
Anyone with knowledge that any of the dates as published are
incorrect may submit either electronic or written comments and, under
21 CFR 60.24, ask for a redetermination (see DATES). Furthermore, as
specified in Sec. 60.30 (21 CFR 60.30), any interested person may
petition FDA for a determination
[[Page 25338]]
regarding whether the applicant for extension acted with due diligence
during the regulatory review period. To meet its burden, the petition
must comply with all the requirements of Sec. 60.30, including but not
limited to: must be timely (see DATES), must be filed in accordance
with Sec. 10.20, must contain sufficient facts to merit an FDA
investigation, and must certify that a true and complete copy of the
petition has been served upon the patent applicant. (See H. Rept. 857,
part 1, 98th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 41-42, 1984.) Petitions should be in
the format specified in 21 CFR 10.30.
Submit petitions electronically to https://www.regulations.gov at
Docket Nos. FDA-2013-S-0610. Submit written petitions (two copies are
required) to the Dockets Management Staff (HFA-305), Food and Drug
Administration, 5630 Fishers Lane, Rm. 1061, Rockville, MD 20852.
Dated: June 11, 2025.
Grace R. Graham,
Deputy Commissioner for Policy, Legislation, and International Affairs.
[FR Doc. 2025-11024 Filed 6-13-25; 8:45 am]
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