Senator Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., will hold a roundtable on Sept. 12 with the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to present details on Insys Therapeutics' sales and marketing strategies, among other opioid manufacturers.
Here are four things to know about the event.
1. Ms. McCaskill's office announced the roundtable Thursday, just a day after releasing a report on Insys marketing practices as part of a comprehensive investigation into drugmakers and drug distributors' alleged role in the ongoing opioid overdose crisis.
"The evidence we've seen of Insys misleadingly and possibly illegally pushing its opioid is appalling," said Ms. McCaskill, according to an emailed release announcing the roundtable. "Far too many families in Missouri and across the country have lost their loved ones from opioid overdoses — and it's important that we understand that the events detailed in my report have tragic real-life consequences."
2. The mother of Sarah Fuller, a patient who allegedly died after overdosing on Insys' fentanyl-based painkiller Subsys, will participate in the roundtable. Ms. McCaskill's first report detailed a phone conversation in which an Insys employee presented misleading information to a pharmacy benefit manager employee while seeking to obtain prior authorization for a Subsys prescription for Ms. Fuller. Subsys is meant to treat breakthrough pain in cancer patients, but Ms. Fuller was being treated for neck and back pain.
3. Experts at the roundtable will include David Fleming, MD, professor emeritus at the University of Missouri School of Medicine in Columbia, and Adriane Fugh-Berman, MD, professor of pharmacology and physiology at GeorgetownUniversityMedicalCenter in Washington, D.C.
4. The roundtable will be held Sept. 12 at 11:00 a.m. in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington D.C.
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