A German manufacturer of OTC products and a Chinese supplier of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) were told to adopt better equipment cleaning practices in recent warning letters from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The letters, posted on 27 September, also identified a slew of other current good manufacturing practice (CGMP) violations.   The first warning letter, to System Kosmetik Produktionsgesellschaft fur kosmetische, located in Munster, Germany...

Trade groups representing the pharmaceutical and medical device industries, while largely supporting the use of remote regulatory assessments (RRAs) as outlined in the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA)’s recent draft guidance, questioned how these assessments would work in practice, including how they would be coordinated with onsite inspections, whether they can be leveraged by foreign regulators and how FDA plans to ensure the privacy of companies and personnel tha...

The assessment aid (AAid), an initiative of the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) Oncology Center of Excellence (OCE), was introduced in 2018 as a pilot program to help streamline the agency’s review of oncology drug applications. In this article, Genentech shares its experience with the AAid to date and provides recommendations for preparing the AAid and improving the process to fully realize its benefits. Keywords – assessment aid, FDA OCE pilots, oncology dr...

Supply chain trading partners expressed broad support for the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) proposed rule on uniform licensing standards for wholesale distributors and third-party logistics providers (3PLs), which are set to replace the current patchwork system of state licensing standards. The standards implement aspects of the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) and are meant to plug holes in the country’s pharmaceutical supply chain.   The generic dru...

The US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) draft guidance on risk management plans (RMPs) has overstepped the agency’s statutory bounds in requiring manufacturers of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) as well as prescription drug manufacturers to submit risk management plans (RMPs) to avert drug shortages.   This requirement could impose the very drug shortages it is designed to prevent, instead of just targeting those products at risk of drug shortage, pharmace...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) chastised a San Diego, California based testing lab in a recent warning letter for “significant deviations” from current good manufacturing practices (GMPs), including initially blocking investigators from entering the site, making false statements, failing to adequately the suitability of its analytical methods for testing products and lacking adequate safeguards over computer equipment.   In another recent warning letter, the...

The US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Office of Pharmaceutical Quality (OPQ) lists both negative and positive trends in its new report assessing the state of pharmaceutical quality in FY2021. Among the setbacks are the increasing number of drug recalls, under-reporting of quality issues in field alert reports (FARs) and a growing number of products failing sampling tests.   On the bright side, OPQ said its New Inspection Protocol Project (NIPP) program has increa...

The US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Office of Generic Drugs (OGD) will most likely approve a higher number of generic drugs in FY2022 compared to the prior year, and the number of generic applications received may continue to exceed OGD’s review capacity, asserted Robert Pollock, a senior advisor with Lachman Consultants.   Pollock, who regularly writes about FDA’s generic approvals, spoke to Regulatory Focus and shared these observations in his recent blog ...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found a slew of good laboratory practice (GLP) violations during the conduct of nonclinical studies at West Sacramento, CA firm Valley Biosystems in a 3 August warning letter and blasted the firm for not following its own procedures governing animal welfare, inadequate staff training, data integrity issues and inadequate reporting of nonclinical studies.   The warning letter was sent to the West Sacramento, CA, based firm ove...

The pharmaceutical industry is calling for changes to the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) draft guidance on radiolabeled mass balance studies, suggesting the guidance be revised to require fewer subjects, and mention a male preference for these studies, with exceptions for females of non-child-bearing age. One manufacturer recommended that antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) be excluded from these studies.   The comments were submitted in response to FDA’s draft ...

While much progress has been made by trading partners in implementing the pharmaceutical tracking systems called for in the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) more work needs to be done to ensure a smooth transition when these systems go live next November, said experts who recently spoke to Regulatory Focus.   Trading partners, for example, need to start testing and piloting data exchanges now to iron out any glitches early on, and manufacturers in particular ...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) just launched a new webpage to share recent actions and activities related to complex generic drugs to spur their development.   “Since these products are generally harder to develop, fewer exist, resulting in less market competition. This means that complex generics may be more expensive and less accessible to the patients who need them,” said the FDA announcement. “Complex generics are a key component of FDA’s Drug Competit...