The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is planning to release seven proposed rules and six final rules to close out 2017, according to an updated list of Department of Health and Human Services rulemakings. Proposed Rulemakings Among the proposals coming are rulemakings dedicated to pediatric study plan requirements , internal decision making and supervisory review at FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, the withdrawal of a regulation that a...

As the number of chemistry, manufacturing and controls (CMC) postapproval manufacturing supplements continues to increase, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday released draft guidance offering recommendations for holders of biologics license applications (BLAs) on the types of minor changes to be documented in an annual report. "Under FDA regulations, postapproval changes in the product, production process, quality controls, equipment, facilities, o...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday released a warning letter sent to China-based active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) manufacturer Changzhou Jintan Qianyao Pharmaceutical Raw Material Factory for, among other issues, failing to have written procedures on its handling of raw materials. FDA noted, "When our investigator asked for a list of your critical raw materials and your sampling requirements, you told our investigator that you had no writte...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday released a warning letter sent 21 April to Lonza’s contract manufacturing site for Class II devices in Walkersville, MD. The four observations from the inspection conducted from 18 January 2017 through 6 February 2017 deal with validation failures, the site’s failure to develop, conduct, control and monitor production processes, corrective and preventive action (CAPA) failures and a failure to adequately establis...

Drugmakers should be mindful of the risks involved with relying on foreign manufacturers as part of their supply chain, said Thomas Cosgrove, director of the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Office of Manufacturing Quality within the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. Speaking at the Food and Drug Law Institute's annual conference on Friday, Cosgrove detailed some of the biggest challenges drugmakers face when contracting with foreign manufacturers, which fi...

A Chinese manufacturer of the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) for the birth control drug levonorgestrel has been placed on the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) import alert list, causing the World Health Organization (WHO) to scramble to find a replacement. "At the moment, there is no alternative levonorgestrel API which has been prequalified," WHO said Wednesday. When an API is prequalified by WHO, it can be used for the manufacture of finished pharmaceuti...

Welcome to our Asia Regulatory Roundup, our weekly overview of the top regulatory news in Asia. TGA Tells Manufacturers to Review Quality Systems to Ensure Data Integrity The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) of Australia has told manufacturers to review their quality systems and the effectiveness of their data management and integrity controls. TGA made the request in a post detailing its intent to step up its focus on data management and integrity. Offici...

As China and India continue to manufacture about 80% of all active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) for the US market, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is tasked with regulating these manufacturing sites and in 2016 that involved issuing hundreds of Form 483s and responding to more than 700 requests for the inspection reports. Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, Focus obtained from FDA two lists detailing not only the 86 requests for the Form 483s issue...

The report, covering fiscal years 2015 and 2016, notes significant US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) progress in refining non-clinical and clinical tools to better evaluate medical products, advancing manufacturing and quality, and enhancing internal IT tools to support the scientific review of regulatory applications. Non-Clinical In terms of the non-clinical predictive models, the report notes that FDA researchers developed a wide variety of computational tools th...

With the pharmaceutical supply chain becoming more global and complex, regulators, industry groups and academics from around the world have developed a new toolkit of resources to increase harmonization across borders to ensure the quality of drugs from manufacture through ingestion. The new toolkit, born out of a five-year collaborative project that actually took four years to complete, brings expertise from the US Pharmacopeial Convention (USP), US Food and Drug Admin...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday released two new warning letters for active pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturers Badrivishal Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals and Lumis Global Pharmaceuticals, both sent 2 March. The letter for Talegaon Dabhade, India-based Badrivishal follows a three-day inspection from last August in which FDA uncovered that the site’s water purification system was not adequately monitored and controlled. FDA investigators also found...

The regulatory group known as the Pharmaceutical Inspection Co-operation Scheme (PIC/S) said in a letter released this week that it is “unanimously concerned” about the public health and safety impact of a new European Commission guideline that would lower good manufacturing practice (GMP) requirements for advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs). "By lowering the GMP requirements for ATMPs, the European Commission is not only exposing patients to an increased risk t...