The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accepts a wide variety of applications into its Emerging Technologies Program (ETP), and is not just focused on continuous manufacturing, said Joel Welch, associate director for science and biosimilar strategy in the agency’s Office of Biotechnology Products.   “I think that sometimes there is a misperception that advanced manufacturing is just about continuous manufacturing,” said Welch who provided an update on the ETP at the...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) needs to develop guidance on post-approval changes for complex generics, and to update its guidance on post-approval changes for non-complex generics as current versions are outdated, according to representatives of the generics industry.   The remarks were made during a panel on post-approval changes for complex generics on 9 November at the Association for Accessible Medicines’ (AAM) GRx+Biosim held a conference in Bethesda, ...

The complex generic market needs to “achieve parity” with the innovator market, as the number of approvals is lagging the innovator sector and has not achieved its full market potential, said Robert Lionberger, director of the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Office of Research and Standards in the Office of Generic Drugs (OGD).   Lionberger made the remarks at the Association for Accessible Medicines’ (AAM) GRx+Biosim conference in Bethesda, MD last week.   ...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) blasted Abraxis Biosciences in a recent warning letter for not addressing recurring media fill failures in its aseptic processing operations of the sterile drug Abraxane and for failing to conduct robust follow-up investigations to determine the root cause of these multiple failures.   During a one-week inspection conducted in late March at the firm’s site in Phoenix, AZ, the agency observed “multiple media fill failures” in th...

Lack oversight of contract third parties is a common violation found in warning letters issued by the US Food and Drug Administrations (FDA) to sponsors, who need to exercise proper oversight of those entities that conduct clinical research on their behalf, said several food and drug law attorneys at the Food and Drug Law Institute’s (FDLI) 2 November meeting.   They also recognized that the clinical trial environment is getting more complex, with more non-traditional ...

Joint draft guidance from two centers at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) outlines ways sponsors can measure pediatric growth consistently in clinical trials for drugs used to treat both rare and common diseases.   “If an investigational drug or biological product may affect growth or pubertal development, then accurate, serial measurement and recording of growth parameters are essential for data interpretation in pediatric clinical trials,” the agency announc...

Updated 3 November 2022* The discovery of novel nitrosamine impurities in pharmaceuticals, coming after the valsartan/nitrosamine crisis of 2018, has caught global regulators and industry by surprise as more products than anticipated are affected by these impurities.   The situation raises new questions about how to set daily acceptable intake limits for pharmaceutical products when toxicological data on these impurities is scarce.   These novel nitrosamines, ...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued new draft guidance with advice for sponsors on developing drugs for treating Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI).   The draft provides recommendations for designing these trials and covers trial populations, efficacy and safety endpoints, nonclinical studies, and pharmacokinetic studies. The guidance does not address fecal microbiota transplant products.   CDI is an anaerobic, gram-positive, spore-forming ...

Two domestic drug manufacturers were lambasted in recent warning letters sent by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for good manufacturing practice (GMP) violations; one was told to adopt better contamination controls and to keep outsourced drugs separate from those made at the facility, while another was reprimanded for keeping the facility in a poor state of repair.   FDA also targeted two firms for failing to file accurate product information in its electroni...

The US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) has proposed that devices that aim to eliminate disparities in health care be designated breakthrough products. The agency is also considering expanding its criteria for breakthrough devices to include products that treat rare diseases, as well as non-addictive products to treat pain or addiction.   These updates were proposed in a recent draft guidance issued on Thursday. If ...

The pharmaceutical industry and its trading partners are making “some progress” in implementing the necessary systems to comply with the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA), according to a recent survey. Yet industry needs to pick up the pace if the November 2023 deadline is to be met, said an official with the Healthcare Distribution Alliance (HDA), whose group conducted the survey.   The survey found that 75% of manufacturers plan to send 100% of their DSCSA-req...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on 7 October released two final guidances to assist manufacturers of moderate- to high-risk medical devices to comply with the agency’s postmarket surveillance requirements and to better understand the agency’s expectations for conducting post-approval studies of these products.   The final versions contain minor changes from the draft versions released for comment in May 2021. (RELATED: FDA issues new draft guidances on devi...