IMPORTANCE Some new drug applications fail because of inadequate drug performance and others are not approved because the information submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is unsatisfactory to make that determination. Resubmission of failed applications is costly, delaying marketing approval and the availability of new drugs to patients.OBJECTIVE To identify the reasons that FDA marketing approval for new drugs was delayed or denied. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTSA retrospective review of FDA documents and extraction of data were performed. We examined all drug applications first submitted to the FDA between 2000 and 2012 for new molecular entities (NMEs), which are active ingredients never before marketed in the United States in any form. Using FDA correspondence and reviews, we investigated the reasons NMEs failed to obtain FDA approval. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURESReasons for delayed FDA approval or nonapproval of NME applications. RESULTSOf the 302 identified NME applications, 151 (50%) were approved when first submitted and 222 (73.5%) were ultimately approved. Seventy-one applications required 1 or more resubmissions before approval, with a median delay to approval of 435 days following the first unsuccessful submission. Of the unsuccessful first-time applications, 24 (15.9%) included uncertainties related to dose selection, 20 (13.2%) choice of study end points that failed to adequately reflect a clinically meaningful effect, 20 (13.2%) inconsistent results when different end points were tested, 17 (11.3%) inconsistent results when different trials or study sites were compared, and 20 (13.2%) poor efficacy when compared with the standard of care. The frequency of safety deficiencies was similar among never-approved drugs compared with those with delayed approval (43 of 80 never approved [53.8%] vs 37 of 71 eventually approved [52.1%]; difference, 1.7% [95% CI, −14.86% to 18.05%]; P = .87). However, efficacy deficiencies were significantly more frequent among the never-approved drugs than among those with delayed approvals (61 of 80 never approved [76.3%] vs 28 of 71 eventually approved [39.4%]; difference, 36.9% [95% CI, 20.25% to 50.86%]; P < .001).CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE Several potentially preventable deficiencies, including failure to select optimal drug doses and suitable study end points, accounted for significant delays in the approval of new drugs. Understanding the reasons for previous failures is helpful to improve the efficiency of clinical development for new drugs.

IntroductionThe rapid expansion of the Internet and computing power in recent years has opened up the possibility of using social media for pharmacovigilance. While this general concept has been proposed by many, central questions remain as to whether social media can provide earlier warnings for rare and serious events than traditional signal detection from spontaneous report data.ObjectiveOur objective was to examine whether specific product–adverse event pairs were reported via social media before being reported to the US FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS).MethodsA retrospective analysis of public Facebook and Twitter data was conducted for 10 recent FDA postmarketing safety signals at the drug–event pair level with six negative controls. Social media data corresponding to two years prior to signal detection of each product–event pair were compiled. Automated classifiers were used to identify each ‘post with resemblance to an adverse event’ (Proto-AE), among English language posts. A custom dictionary was used to translate Internet vernacular into Medical Dictionary for Regulatory Activities (MedDRA®) Preferred Terms. Drug safety physicians conducted a manual review to determine causality using World Health Organization-Uppsala Monitoring Centre (WHO-UMC) assessment criteria. Cases were also compared with those reported in FAERS.FindingsA total of 935,246 posts were harvested from Facebook and Twitter, from March 2009 through October 2014. The automated classifier identified 98,252 Proto-AEs. Of these, 13 posts were selected for causality assessment of product–event pairs. Clinical assessment revealed that posts had sufficient information to warrant further investigation for two possible product–event associations: dronedarone–vasculitis and Banana Boat Sunscreen--skin burns. No product–event associations were found among the negative controls. In one of the positive cases, the first report occurred in social media prior to signal detection from FAERS, whereas the other case occurred first in FAERS.ConclusionsAn efficient semi-automated approach to social media monitoring may provide earlier insights into certain adverse events. More work is needed to elaborate additional uses for social media data in pharmacovigilance and to determine how they can be applied by regulatory agencies.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s40264-016-0491-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Topics include routine and developmental data mining activities, short descriptions of mined FDA data, advantages and challenges of data mining at the FDA, and future directions of data mining at the FDA.