INSYS Therapeutics Addresses New York Attorney General’s Complaint

PHOENIX, Feb. 01, 2018 -- INSYS Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:INSY), a leader in the development, manufacture and commercialization of pharmaceutical cannabinoids and spray technology, today released the following statement in response to a complaint filed by the New York attorney general:

Like so many stakeholders in the healthcare community and in the government, we share the desire to address the serious national challenge related to the misuse and abuse of opioids that has led to addiction and unnecessary deaths and has caused so much pain to families and communities around the country. 

Consistent with our management team’s sincere commitment to conduct business according to high ethical standards and the best interests of patients, we also have taken and will continue to strive to take measures to ensure that sound compliance protocols underpin our business practices. Furthermore, we intend to continue working collaboratively and constructively with all relevant authorities to resolve our outstanding governmental investigations.

Concurrently, we remain committed to focusing on patients by delivering on the promise of our approved and potential pipeline products for their appropriate indications, which address a variety of serious and unmet patient needs. In this regard, INSYS has invested more than $250 million in R&D since 2013.

With respect to the recently filed New York Attorney General complaint, the following facts bear consideration:

• Launched in 2012, SUBSYS® (fentanyl sublingual spray) accounted for a fractional percentage (less than 0.02 percent) of opioid prescriptions nationally.  
• In 2015, the year of highest utilization for SUBSYS, there were about 9,200 patients who were prescribed the product versus approximately 52 million patients who were prescribed opioids in the United States. This represents less than 0.018 percent.
• The figures are similar for New York, where approximately 2.23 million patients were prescribed opioids in 2015, of which 680 patients or 0.03 percent were prescribed SUBSYS. In 2017, SUBSYS patients were 0.0065 percent of the total patients prescribed opioids in New York.

Accordingly, we do not believe it is factually accurate to link INSYS with materially contributing to the opioid crisis in the State of New York or the nation. As the healthcare community and the government seek solutions to our national opioid crisis, which began more than a decade and half ago, and our company looks to put behind it the challenges of the past, it can be disheartening when dialogue on this extremely important topic disregards the enormous amount of data and other facts available to all stakeholders. 

About INSYS
INSYS Therapeutics is a specialty pharmaceutical company that develops and commercializes innovative drugs and novel drug delivery systems of therapeutic molecules that improve patients’ quality of life. Using proprietary spray technology and capabilities to develop pharmaceutical cannabinoids, INSYS is developing a pipeline of products intending to address unmet medical needs and the clinical shortcomings of existing commercial products. INSYS is committed to developing medications for potentially treating addiction to opioids, opioid overdose, epilepsy, and other disease areas with a significant unmet need.