President Donald Trump's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary nominee Alex Azar told the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday that drug prices "are too high" and he will work to bring them down, though, "There's no silver bullet." Azar previously told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that drug prices will be his top priority. The comments on Tuesday followed questions raised by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and others regardi...

Industry groups representing generic and brand-name drugs, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and pharmacies offered their comments on a November meeting held at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on possible solutions to increase competition and lower pharmaceutical prices in the US. The organizations discussed differing views on what can be done, with the generic group noting its own declining prices and possible ways to combat abuses, the brand-name industry point...

With a nonprofit that paid almost $100 million in 2015 financial grants to patients now saying that it will not offer such payments in 2018, Gregory Demske, chief counsel to the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the Inspector General (OIG), sent a letter on Thursday seeking help from the pharmaceutical industry group PhRMA in providing free drugs.  The situation arises as OIG found that the nonprofit, known as the Caring Voice Coalition (CVC), may h...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday announced that shortages of IV saline are expected to improve early this year as Baxter – a leading producer of IV saline fluids – has said all its facilities on Puerto Rico have now returned to the commercial power grid. The good news on Baxter comes as the agency said all other companies that were on an initial list of drugs considered at risk of potential shortages – because the drugs were largely or entirely...

In the last days of 2017, the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Office of Prescription Drug Promotion (OPDP) issued a warning letter to over-the-counter (OTC) drugmaker Avanthi, Inc. for omitting risk information in a panel for the weight loss drug Lomaira (phentermine hydrochloride USP). The warning letter brings the total number of enforcement letters issued by OPDP in 2017 to four (three warning letters and one untitled letter), a record low for the agency. Whi...

Fresh out of a record year for generic drug approvals, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Wednesday kicked off the new year by releasing new draft guidance and a new manual of policies and procedures (MAPP) with an eye toward decreasing the number of review cycles abbreviated new drug applications (ANDAs) undergo before approval. Multiple review cycles has been an outstanding challenge for the agency in years past, with less than 10% of ANDAs winning ap...

California's Supreme Court on Thursday ruled against Novartis in a decision that could have wider implications for whether brand-name or generic drugmakers should be held liable for warning consumers of risks in their drug labels. In a departure from other recent rulings, the highest California court found that a brand-name drug manufacturer's duty to warn consumers does extend to a generic, but only because federal regulations currently require generic drugs to carr...

The number of new molecular entities (NMEs) approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2017 (46 so far, though that number does not include the high-profile CAR-T and gene therapies approved this year) has now topped the all-time high of NMEs approved in any year except 1996. But the record number of approvals comes as experts, including CDER Director Janet Woodcock, have expressed reservations about tracking NME approvals like a horse race, or compari...

The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) on Tuesday released a new report on the pharmaceutical industry's sales and expenses related to research and development (R&D), noting that the amount of money people spend on prescription drugs has nearly doubled since the 1990s, mostly because of brand-name drugs. Retail prescription drug expenditures were estimated to account for about 12% of total personal health care service spending in the US in 2015, up from abou...

Members of the House-Senate Conference Committee discussing the GOP's tax overhaul plan on Friday released the final text of the bill, which would reduce the rare disease research tax credits biopharma companies can claim by half. Currently, companies can claim a 50% tax credit for qualified clinical testing expenses incurred in testing certain drugs for rare diseases or conditions, generally referred to as "orphan drugs," affecting fewer than 200,000 persons in th...

To ensure the National Drug Code directory is accurate, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday sent a reminder to pharmaceutical companies that 31 December 2017 is the deadline by which the firms must update or certify their drug listings with FDA via electronic format. This applies to drug listings that were not initially listed or updated during the current calendar year and is the first deadline of the annual certification requirement under Part ...

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...