Pomerantz Defeats Motion to Dismiss Delcath

ATTORNEY: TAMAR A. WEINRIB
POMERANTZ MONITOR SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2014

On June 27, 2014 Judge Schofield of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York denied defendants' motion to dismiss our case against Delcath Systems, Inc., in whichPomerantz is sole lead counsel.

Delcath is a specialty pharmaceutical and medical device company focused on oncology. The case concerns the company’s development of the "Melblez Kit," a device designed to deliver targeted high doses of melphalan (a chemotherapeutic agent) to treat certain types of liver cancer. A key part of the kit is a filter, the purpose of which is to remove the toxic byproducts of the melphalan before they reenter the bloodstream from the liver, thus preventing exposure to toxic levels of melphalan which can lead to severe and often fatal side effects. 

The FDA ultimately refused to approve the Melblez Kit, causing the market price of Delcath’s stock to plummet. Our complaint alleges that the company knowingly failed to disclose to investors that the filter it had used during the clinical trial had not sufficiently removed the toxicities from the blood, resulting in far more deaths and other serious adverse events than those caused by other available treatment methods.

Specifically, during of the clinical trial the company used a filter (the “Clark” filter) that had only been tested “in vitro,” and not on live subjects, prior to its inclusion in Phase III oftesting on humans. Those in vitro tests, however, failed to detect flaws in the Clark filter. After receiving a Refusal to File letter from the FDA in response to its first New Drug Application (“NDA”) for the Melblez Kit, which cited major deficiencies in the NDA including incomplete information regarding serious adverse reactions, as well as manufacturing and quality control issues, Delcath filed a second NDA purporting to correct these major flaws.

The second NDA, however, sought approval of the Melblez Kit with yet another new filter, the Generation 2 filter, which the Company had, once again, tested in vitro, even though it knew those same in vitro tests had failed to detect critical deficiencies in the Clark filter. The company never tested the Generation 2 filter on humans. Defendants did not disclose to investors that they developed the Generation 2 filter, and included it in the second NDA, because of the unprecedented toxicities caused by the Clark filter.  

The FDA convened an advisory panel to review the new NDA, and that panel unanimously recommended that the agency not approve the Melblez Kit, because the risk of harm outweighed the Kit's potential benefit. The FDA relied on this recommendation and ultimately rejected the second NDA.

The court found that defendants should have informed investors that the severity and frequency of the serious adverse events far surpassed those resulting from other available treatments and that no patients in the control group died during the Phase III trial. The court held that the omitted facts about the relative toxicity of defendants’ product caused the FDA to reject the Melblez Kit. The court also found that the Complaint sufficiently pled scienter by alleging that defendants "knew facts or had access to information suggesting that their public statements were not accurate." 

Specifically, the court held that the following factors created a compelling inference of scienter: 1) Delcath is a small company focused on one product; 2) FDA approval of the Melblez Kit hinged on the Phase III trial results; 3) confidential witnesses all corroborated that Delcath's CEO, defendant Hobbs, made all the company's decisions, including those relevant to the Melblez Kit; 4) Hobbs' public statements indicated that he was familiar with the trial data; 5) the company proposed a new and relatively untested filter, the Generation 2 filter, in its revised NDA, rather than the Clark filter used in the Phase III trials, suggesting that defendants knew that the results of its Phase III trials were not as strong as they represented in public statements; and 6) the FDA, and the Advisory Panel it convened, both made scathing comments about the Phase III trial results, and ultimately rejected the Melblez Kit NDA as a result.

With regard to loss causation, the court found that defendants' argument that the drop in stock price was caused by the FDA's rejection of the NDA rather than the revelation of a fraud "is a factual argument for a later day and does not diminish the sufficiency of the Complaint."

The decision is notable as it requires pharmaceutical companies going through the FDA approval process for clinically tested drugs or devices to give investors a complete picture of specific known risks that may impact approvability, and not hide behind generalized risk warnings, particularly where the company opts to speak about the trial results.

The discovery process has begun and Lead Plaintiff will file its motion for class certification in October.