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...

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price told a House appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday that his agency is working with President Donald Trump on a plan to bring down the cost of pharmaceutical drugs. Citing Trump’s numerous mentions since he took office of a plan for a new "bidding" system, Price said skyrocketing drug prices is an issue that members of Congress on both sides of the aisle are looking to target. In defending Trump’s proposed "skinny" budge...

Leaders from the biopharmaceutical industry lobby and a patient advocacy group on Wednesday urged members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee to reauthorize the sixth iteration of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act ( PDUFA VI). And, in her second straight day of testimony on user fees before Congress, Janet Woodcock, director of the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) detailed how the agency's ability to...

President Donald Trump’s administration released its budget blueprint for FY 2018 on Thursday, calling for a hike in user fees from industry to make up for cuts elsewhere at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). While the blueprint offers little detail on what such cuts would actually mean for the agency and pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device industries, the plan says it would recalibrate FDA medical product user fees “to over $2 billion in 2018, approximate...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began implementing the recently passed 21st Century Cures Act on Monday by publishing a draft list of class II devices that will be exempt from premarket notification requirements, or 510(k)s. FDA said in a statement that it “believes that the devices identified in the Federal Register are sufficiently well understood and do not present risks that require premarket notification review to provide a reasonable assurance of safe...

Healthcare law firm Epstein Becker & Green (EBG) is calling on the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to improve how it handles challenges to its designation decisions for combination products. In a citizen petition sent to FDA last week, the firm says that lengthy delays for such appeals negatively affects both product sponsors and patients by delaying the launch of new combination products. Background Combination products, or products that combine two or more diff...

Despite some improvements, drugmakers say the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not fully clarified its expectations for developing new antibiotic drugs or detailed how to access new incentives, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Specifically, GAO says that FDA has issued 14 updated or new guidances focused on antibiotics since the Generating Antibiotic Incentives Now (GAIN) Act was passed as part of the Food and Drug Admi...

Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) on Monday reintroduced a bill that would grant drugmakers an additional six months exclusivity for repurposing already-approved drugs to treat rare diseases. The bill, known as the Orphan Product Extensions Now Accelerating Cures and Treatments (OPEN) Act , was initially included in the 21st Century Cures Act , but was removed before it was signed into law last year. The additional exclusivity for new orphan indications under the OPEN Act w...

The massive 21st Century Cures Act, rushed to passage in the waning days of President Barack Obama’s presidency, features a whole host of provisions that will take years for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) to digest and implement, but it also includes several provisions that must be addressed by 13 March. Among those provisions of the law that must be acted upon within 90 days of the law’s enactment (or by 13 March) inc...

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) on Friday confirmed to Focus that he is gathering more information and discussing with his staff and interested parties a possible inquiry into the Orphan Drug Act ’s abuses leading to high drug prices. “Based on the reporting from Kaiser Health News [KHN] about how the orphan drug provisions appear to be stretched beyond their original intent, and the strong consumer concern about high drug prices, I'm interested in learning whether...

Small biopharmaceutical companies, often known as the drivers of innovation, face a number of unique challenges in bringing new treatments, particularly for rare diseases, to market, Richard Moscicki, deputy director for science operations at the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, and P.K. Tandon, senior vice president of Sanofi Genzyme, wrote. In an article published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine , the a...

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) on Monday announced that its management board signed off on a slightly increased 2017 budget as preparations for the UK’s departure from the EU continue. “The extent of the impact of Brexit on the Agency’s operations and location is uncertain and will depend on the future relationship between the EU and the UK,” EMA said. “Depending on the outcome of the negotiations, this could cause significant disruption to the Agency’s operations ...