The US Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (FDA’s CDER) on Monday issued a draft guidance that provides generic drug applicants with answers to commonly asked questions in the drug quality area. The new guidance is designed to provide an immediate response to such questions to reduce the number of controlled correspondence on identical topics.   The guidance, which is in a question-and-answer format, covers FDA’s policies on quality...

The European Medicines Agency has begun a new evaluation of an immunosuppressive drug to treat certain patients with COVID-19.   The agency announced Monday that it is reviewing an extension of indication for Kineret (anakinra, Swedish Orphan Biovitrum AB), to treat people with COVID-19 pneumonia at risk of developing severe respiratory failure. The human interleukin-1 (IL-1) antagonist was first authorized for use in the EU in 2002 and is currently authorized for th...

Thanks to the 21st Century Cures Act , the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday proposed to exempt additional class II medical devices under five different product codes from 510(k) requirements. The proposed exemptions follow the finalization of a list in July 2017 of 1,003 types of class II devices that the agency also said do not present risks that require premarket notification. But for four of the five product codes proposed on Thursday, FDA has ...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Monday revised its guidance on the electronic common technical document (eCTD) format to note specific cases where the agency believes a submission should be exempted or granted a waiver. As far as what submission types warrant an exemption from eCTD requirements, FDA points to Type III drug master files (DMFs), which provide information on packaging or packaging materials in support of drug, generic drug or biologic applicat...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday announced that Indian drugmaker Hetero Labs is recalling 87 lots of losartan tablets distributed by Camber Pharmaceuticals after testing found the drugs contained a potentially carcinogenic impurity, N-Nitroso-N-methyl-4 aminobutyric acid (NMBA).   The recall is the latest in a series of recalls tied to the discovery of nitrosamine impurities in angiotensin II receptor blocker (ARB) drugs in the last year.   Previ...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday published draft guidance that would establish a new type of letter the agency sends to generic drugmakers to provide applicants with preliminary thoughts on possible deficiencies of an abbreviated new drug application (ANDA). Thanks to the recently reauthorized Generic Drug User Fee Amendments (GDUFA II), FDA will issue Deficiency Review Letters (DRLs) and information requests (IRs) to obtain further information ...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last month began releasing new information a monthly basis related to generic drugs. Whereas in previous years, the agency released monthly statistics on 12 different categories related to FDA’s review of abbreviated new drug applications (ANDAs), now the agency releases monthly data on 30 different categories. The new categories will shine a light on metrics where the generics industry has struggled in recent years, like...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in October issued complete responses to 325 abbreviated new drug applications (ANDAs) and approved or tentatively approved 101 ANDAs, the highest numbers in a single month since the enactment of Generic Drug User Fee Amendments ( GDUFA ). FDA approved 87 ANDAs, including seven first-time generic approvals , and granted 14 more tentative ANDA approvals The figures come from FDA's first monthly performance report for its generi...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Monday detailed its plans to make it easier for companies developing direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic health risk (GHR) tests to get those tests on the market. To do so, FDA is proposing a model similar to a pilot for digital health products, by which companies can be pre-certified to market low-risk software-based devices following an assessment of their systems for software design, validation and maintenance. Similarly, F...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday issued a revised version of its draft guidance on the information that must be pre-submitted in order to receive a priority review for an abbreviated new drug application (ANDA). As part of the negotiations to reauthorize the Generic Drug User Fee Amendments (GDUFA II), FDA agreed to shorten its review of eligible priority generics by two months if sponsors submit a pre-submission facility correspondence (PFC) at leas...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday released draft guidance on the agency’s new commitments related to controlled correspondence under the recently reauthorized Generic Drug User Fee Amendments (GDUFA II). When finalized, the 20-page guidance will replace guidance from September 2015 from GDUFA I. The GDUFA II commitment letter defines complex controlled correspondence as correspondence related to: Evaluation of clinical content Review of bioe...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday issued a draft guidance describing the new fee structure and types of fees applicable to generic drugmakers under the recently reauthorized Generic Drug User Fee Amendments (GDUFA II). Specifically, the guidance provides details on the various types of user fees under GDUFA II, how companies can pay those fees, the consequences of not paying and who is responsible for paying them. The guidance also provides informatio...