The US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) this week detailed changes to its process for handling requests for the agency to recognize new voluntary consensus standards for medical devices, as required by the 21st Century Cures Act . Medical device makers often rely on consensus standards in the development and testing of their products, and FDA allows device makers to submit a declaration of conformity to show that the...

The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies on Tuesday voted to advance its draft FY2018 appropriations bill, which includes $2.8 billion in discretionary funding for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The full Appropriations Committee is scheduled to meet Thursday to mark up the bill before voting to advance it to the Senate for consideration. While the funding levels in the bill d...

The House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday released the fiscal year 2018 Agriculture Appropriations bill, which would enact a total of $2.8 billion in discretionary funding for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). That level of appropriations, which stands in stark contrast to President Donald Trump’s call to eliminate appropriations for FDA and run the agency entirely on industry user fees, would continue FDA’s budget authority (BA) appropriations at the...

At a Senate hearing on President Donald Trump's FY2018 budget request for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Commissioner Scott Gottlieb vowed to eliminate the backlog of orphan drug designation requests and said he will soon release "modern and risk-based" tools for assessing new treatments, especially for rare diseases and conditions with no effective treatments. "Right now we have a backlog of about 200 orphan drug designation requests where we haven't respond...

This article examines the benefits for both FDA and the medical device industry derived from "user fees" authorized by the passage of the Medical Device User Fee Act (MDUFA 2002) and its subsequent reauthorizations. 1 Introduction The category "medical devices" encompasses a wide variety of products intended for diagnosing diseases or other conditions as well as the cure, mitigation, treatment or prevention of disease. 2 Among its responsibilities, the US Food and D...

US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner Scott Gottlieb was in the hot seat on Thursday to defend President Donald Trump's budget plan to the House appropriations subcommittee, though the conversation quickly dovetailed away from the billion-dollar user fee increase proposed, and revealed that FDA as of Thursday is no longer subject to a federal hiring freeze. While Gottlieb noted that he "wasn't involved in the formulation of the budget," as he's only bee...

President Donald Trump's FY 2018 budget proposal for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), leaked late Monday, seeks a last-minute renegotiation of user fee deals forged over the last two years to make up for about a 30% decrease in the agency’s budget. The call for more than $1 billion in new user fees to replace appropriations comes as both the House and Senate have advanced their versions of the user fees reauthorization legislation with the previously negoti...

Eleven Senate democrats sent a letter to President Donald Trump on Tuesday explaining how his proposed cuts in the FY 2018 budget for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will make implementation of the bipartisan 21st Century Cures Act much more difficult. "We urge you to listen to both sides of the aisle and drop any attempts to implement the damaging proposed cuts at HHS laid out in your budget," they wrote. Trump’s budget blueprint for 2018 ...

Beckton, Dickinson and Co. (BD) and Roche Diagnostics are seeking clarifications and changes to the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) proposed list of Class II medical devices to be exempted from premarket notification. The comments follow the release in March of FDA’s draft list , which was released as part of a provision in the 21st Century Cures Act . The devices listed include lots of basic diagnostic tests and reagents, as well as other equipment like ...

The US House and Senate appropriations committees on Monday released government spending bills through the end of this fiscal year, offering the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) a boost in discretionary spending and user fee revenues. In total, the agreement on spending through 30 September 2017 contains $153.4 billion in discretionary and mandatory funding, which is $16.3 billion below President Donald Trump’s FY2017 budget request and $12.5 billion above the FY20...

Leaders of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, led by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), on Thursday re-introduced legislation to combat anticompetitive practices that can block the market entry of lower-cost generic drugs.  Known as the Creating and Restoring Equal Access to Equivalent Samples (CREATES) Act, the resurrected bill targets sample sharing (when brand-name drugmakers prevent generic firms from obtaining samples of the branded products so the generic ...

This article discusses key points and benefits of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) for those filing a New Drug Application (NDA) and explains how PDUFA user fees have played an important role in expediting FDA's drug approval process. Introduction: Benefits Offered by PDUFA When planning a New Drug Application (NDA) or other type of marketing application, regulatory professionals must consider many things. These considerations include: when the data will com...