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Comment · 1 month ago
Is the scheme you describe a risk? Sure. Any new mechanism is, until it has a track record.

What I meant by legible: to run it, you'd have to pass FDA's IND review and reporting requirements, IRB review of the Phase 1, and then Montana ETRB review, with public annual outcome reporting and no withholding of safety data from patients. That's a high bar.

If your view is that nothing short of full approval is enough of a bar and no alternative should be tried even at small scale, fine. We should agree to disagree here then.

Comment · 1 month ago
Physicians get a pretty good liability shield in the law; is that strong enough against malpractice suits? I don't know, but it hasn't been raised much as a problem relative to the sponsor risk
Comment · 1 month ago
Are you sure about that? I've not run a phase-1 but I'm often told the CMC is the most gnarly and expensive part of it & its due to requirements, not sponsor choices.
Comment · 1 month ago
Relative to the federal approval it's pre-market. In Montana, if your treatment is approved by a review board it's in market
Comment · 1 month ago
Maybe, but if it's GRAS and supplements/non-drug interventions, can't you do it anyway? This law is addressed at products that are regulated as drugs, biologics and medical devices
Comment · 1 month ago
- Strong demand from biotechs (first approval decision made and public, Parley Neurotech), we're talking several dozens with $5-300m in funding each

- Clinics a bit more lagging, because licensing takes up to 90 days; in a few weeks we hopefully see the first clinic

- Business models: I'd personally be very excited about open-sourcing phase-1 assets to encourage further development to better drugs by more people

- Yes, this was an explicit hope from the geroscience community to address gaps e.g. in frailty, age-induces diseases with multiple possible endpoints

- No explicit rules on telehealth, but administration needs to be in Montana under a brick-and-mortar clinic; telehealth probably possible within those limits

Comment · 1 month ago
That is the same with all post-market monitoring for drugs. And maybe we can do better because more nimble/startup approach in a small state
Comment · 1 month ago
I think what you're describing is a risk to the sponsor/biotech, not the physician. It is not a clear-cut question though for the sponsor, because US states regulate medical practice. Federal jurisdiction applies when there is interstate commerce, and that risk exposure depends largely e.g. on how you do manufacturing and past FDA enforcement history. Also there are options where some of the activities you need to do you can do through federal right-to-try. So it depends on what you're trying to do but is not "you can't use it" by default.

(Not legal advise.)

Comment · 1 month ago
Well that'll be a pretty sophisticated scheme, requiring $5-10m funding per phase-1 trial. I suppose that's possible but it would be a highly legible scheme.

Also what would be the bad outcomes here? If those drugs end up not being safe (that is prevented by the requirement to not withhold safety data), or being effective?

If effectiveness is what you're thinking of, keep in mind things like off-label are already allowed, so even in the current system you have drugs that aren't proven effective for what they're used and we don't call the physicians that prescribe off-label bad actors necessarily.

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