Welcome to our Asia Regulatory Roundup, our weekly overview of the top regulatory news in Asia. India Offers Fast-Track Approvals to HIV, Hepatitis Combination Products The Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) is offering fast-track approvals to combination products to treat HIV and hepatitis B and C. DCGI Dr GN Singh is prepared to waive the need to run clinical trials and truncate the regulatory submission process to cut the time it takes for sponsors to br...

With a goal of avoiding unnecessary duplication of studies performed on a previously approved drug, the 505(b)(2) pathway allows for a more streamlined development and approval process, but for new drug applications (NDAs), the pathway has not led to shorter approval times, according to a recent analysis conducted by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. Background Established under the Hatch-Waxman Amendments of 1984 to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosme...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Wednesday revealed that it approved more than 700 abbreviated new drug applications (ANDAs) for generic drugs in 2016, though the number of ANDAs pending an industry response also rose by more than 700. According to the most recent generic drug review dashboard , the number of ANDAs filed with no communications yet from FDA also fell from 581 ANDAs as of 1 January 2016 to 351 ANDAs as of 1 January 2017. The dashboard s...

More approvals of new immune-checkpoint inhibitors, targeted and personalized therapies, as well as the use of real-world evidence are coming in the near future, Richard Pazdur, director of the Office of Hematology and Oncology at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and associate director Gideon Blumenthal wrote in a comment published this week in Nature . Those expectations follow 2016 oncology approvals for FDA that included five new molecular entities and 17 ef...

China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) is facing increasing pressure as a backlog of pharmaceutical marketing and clinical trial applications grow, though trial standards there are approaching those of international standards, according to a perspective published in Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology on Tuesday. At least part of the problem stems from the fact that CFDA uses “an overly strict approach” for approving clinical trial applications, which contrasts with a...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) wasn't the only major regulator to OK fewer new drugs in 2016 than in recent years. Across the Atlantic, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) saw a similar decline in the number of drugs, with only 27 new active substances (NASs) recommended. In fact, both regulators saw the lowest number of new drugs given a positive review in their respective jurisdictions in years. For EMA, the number represents the fewest NASs recommended in a...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) late Tuesday approved a generic version of Jazz Pharmaceuticals’ Xyrem (sodium oxybate) to help treat a sleep disorder but at least one investment analyst thinks the move could lead to a slippery slope of companies adding drug-drug interaction (DDI) patents and using them to keep generics from entering the market. In addition to granting approval to the generic, FDA approved a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) for ...

The blitz of new US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidance (11 draft and final documents in the last three days) continued on Friday with the release of a draft helping to clarify for generic drug companies how to define and use several terms, and new ways to expedite generic approvals. In a shift in direction for the agency, and in order to speed the availability of generics, FDA “now will approve a generic drug for which it has made a final determination that the ...

If a decline in US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals of new pharmaceuticals is a bad sign for the industry, then 2016 was the worst year since 2010. And with only 18 FDA decisions on new drugs expected in 2017, according to BioPharma Catalyst , the number of FDA approvals may continue to decline to a level the industry has not seen since 2007, when 18 new molecular entities (NMEs) and new biologic license applications (BLAs) were approved. But as John ...

The second revision of the guidance, unveiled Wednesday, is part of the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) attempt to assist abbreviated new drug application (ANDA) sponsors in understanding what deficiencies may cause FDA to refuse to receive (RTR) an ANDA. The guidance features certain recurrent deficiencies that in FDA’s experience have led to an RTR decision, which FDA says means that an ANDA is “not substantially complete.” The guidance also describes how FDA w...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday announced a final rule amending regulations on citizen petitions that would ensure the agency does not delay the approval of a pending generic drug or biosimilar because of such petitions, unless that delay is necessary to protect the public health. The final rule, which is effective 9 January 2017, implements section 505(q) of the Federal Food, Drug & Cosmetics Act (FD&C Act), which governs the manner in which FDA ...

With less than half the number of new drugs approved in 2016 ( 19 so far ) when compared to 2015 (45 total ), John Jenkins, director of the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Office of New Drugs, told attendees Friday at a Prevision Policy conference in Washington, DC, that the decline has not been due to a shift in the agency’s standards or policies. “There are fewer applications in front of us to act upon,” Jenkins said, noting that although he cannot discuss in...