by Ben Vernia | December 20th, 2012
On December 19, the Department of Justice announced that Amgen Inc. had entered a guilty plea to a single misdemeano
Earlier today, at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, New York, U.S. District Judge Sterling Johnson, Jr. accepted a guilty plea by American biotechnology giant Amgen Inc. (Amgen) for illegally introducing a misbranded drug into interstate commerce. The plea is part of a global settlement with the United States in which Amgen agreed to pay $762 million to resolve criminal and civil liability arising from its sale and promotion of certain drugs. The settlement represents the single largest criminal and civil False Claims Act settlement involving a biotechnology company in U.S. history.
The announcement was made by Stuart F. Delery, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Division; Marshall L. Miller, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York; Jenny A. Durkan, U.S. Attorney, Western District of Washington; Carmen M. Ortiz, U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts; Thomas O’Donnell, Special Agent in Charge, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG), New York Regional Office; John Roth, Director, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Office of Criminal Investigations; Eric Schneiderman, New York State Attorney General; and George Venizelos, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s New York Field Office; along with numerous law enforcement and regulatory partners.
As part of the plea agreement and criminal settlement, Amgen entered a guilty plea yesterday before U.S. District Judge Sterling Johnson of the Eastern District of New York to a criminal information charging the company with illegally introducing a misbranded drug, Aranesp, into interstate commerce. Under the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, it is illegal for drug companies to introduce into the marketplace drugs that the company intends will be used “off-label,” i.e., for uses or at doses not approved by the FDA. Aranesp is an erythropoiesis-stimulating agent (ESA) that was approved by the FDA at calibrated doses for particular patient populations suffering from anemia. In order to increase sales of Aranesp and reap the resulting profits, Amgen illegally sold the drug with the intention that it be used at off-label doses that the FDA had specifically considered and rejected, and for an off-label treatment that the FDA had never approved. Under the terms of the criminal plea agreement, Amgen will pay a criminal fine of $136 million and criminal forfeiture in the amount of $14 million.
As part of the civil settlement, Amgen has agreed to pay $612 million ($587.2 million to the United States and $24.8 million to the states) to resolve claims that it caused false claims to be submitted to Medicare, Medicaid and other government insurance programs. The federal civil settlement agreement encompasses allegations that Amgen: (1) promoted Aranesp and two other drugs that it manufactured, Enbrel and Neulasta, for off-label uses and doses that were not approved by the FDA and not properly reimbursable by federal insurance programs; (2) offered illegal kickbacks to a wide range of entities in an effort to influence health care providers to select its products for use, regardless of whether they were reimbursable by federal health care programs or were medically necessary; and (3) engaged in false price reporting practices involving several of its drugs. As part of the global settlement, Amgen has also agreed to enter into a Corporate Integrity Agreement (CIA) with HHS-OIG that will govern its conduct, and ensure careful oversight of its branding and marketing practices.
The Government announced that the settlement resolves ten separate qui tam, or whistleblower cases, but did not announce the share the relators will receive. An additional case was resolved by a related settlement:
In a separate civil settlement, International Nephrology Network (INN), renamed Integrated Nephrology Network, a subsidiary of AmerisourceBergen Corporation, has also agreed to pay $15 million to resolve civil liability arising from its role in the marketing of Aranesp. The agreement encompasses claims that INN offered illegal kickbacks to influence health care providers’ selection of Aranesp for treatment of kidney disease and in so doing also caused false price reporting for Aranesp.
Comment: The Government has used the misdemeanor information in this case to extend its legal theory of misbranding to include “reactive marketing”:”
Aware that its misbranding of Aranesp was illegal, Amgen instructed its sales representatives to promote off-label uses through the guise of “reactive marketing.” This technique attempted to circumvent the law by inducing doctors to ask questions about an off-label use, to serve as a smokescreen to hide Amgen’s intentional effort to introduce the drug for unapproved, “off-label” uses. Amgen thus trained its sales representatives to intentionally elicit questions from doctors about off-label uses as legal cover to then provide the doctors with studies supporting the off-label use, thereby promoting the drug for that unapproved use. The studies Amgen provided to doctors to support off-label uses were often the very same studies that the FDA had rejected as insufficient to support the safety and efficacy of those off-label uses, when Amgen had applied to expand Aranesp’s label to encompass them.
Prior cases tended to rely on active, unsolicited promotion of off-label uses to render the drug in question misbranded.
