Benefit-risk (BR) assessment, a central part of regulatory decision making, has become increasingly structured in response to the need for consistency and transparency, and in alignment with the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) 2021 draft BR guidance. Early planning and established processes are critical to successful execution. To help regulatory affairs professionals guide clinical development teams in planning and conducting patient-focused structured BR assess...

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) asserted in two recent reports that the regulators need to address some of the ambiguities associated with advanced manufacturing to accelerate adoption in the pharmaceutical industry. The GAO further recommended that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should set benchmarks to better measure uptake to this mode of manufacturing.   A USP official discussed both reports, as well as...

Sterile drug manufacturing is a high-risk operation and to manage these risks, drug manufacturers need to “tightly control” a multitude of variables to ensure processes remain in a state of control, asserted Brooke Higgins, a senior policy advisor for global compliance in the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER).   Higgins outlined some of the consequences that can occur when these variables are not controlled, includin...

The pharmaceutical industry would like to get more clarity on the timing of drug-drug interaction (DDI) studies and the scope of these DDI studies in their comments to regulators on the proposed International Council for Harmonization’s (ICH) M12 guideline, said a regulator at an ICH regional meeting sponsored by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Health Canada on 24 February.   Rajanikanth Madabushi, associate director for guidance and scientific policy at ...

The US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Office of Pharmaceutical Quality (OPQ) reported that progress has been made over the past year in advancing its quality management maturity initiative and in its quality assessment review process in its 2022 annual report.   The report also describes progress made in other areas under OPQ’s remit. The office’s previous two reports focused largely on its COVID-19 response. (RELATED:  FDA’s OPQ reports on drug quality efforts ...

Advertising and promotion (ad promo) of prescription drugs is regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In 1992, the agency implemented Subpart H of Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) to allow for the accelerated approval of new drugs for serious or life-threatening illnesses. Approval of a drug through the Subpart H pathway introduced a range of regulatory requirements, some of which had specific implications for the ad promo of Subpart H drug...

The US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) should brief pilot participants ahead of the actual assessments and use a simplified rubric for scoring or rating a manufacturers quality management maturity (QMM) program. These were some of the lessons learned as the agency develops a future rating program for evaluating manufacturers on drug quality, according to results reported in a 10 January article published in The AAPS Journal .   These pilots “afforded FDA the opp...

The federal budget law passed by Congress and signed by the president in late December calls on federal authorities to establish “warm base” domestic manufacturing to respond quickly to demand surges for medical products during a public health emergency.   Section 2401 of the law calls on the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to work with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to coordinate these efforts.   The law amends Section 319...

The recently enacted ominous spending bill approved by Congress in late December directs the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to establish advanced manufacturing centers for excellence and an advanced manufacturing technologies designation program.   The omnibus spending bill was signed by President Biden on 27 December and authorizes $3.5 billion in budget authority for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in FY 2023, a 6.5% increase compared to its 2022 bud...

India’s Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO) implemented the New Drugs and Clinical Trials Rules in 2019 to expedite the drug development and approval processes. This article provides an overview of those processes; explains the rule-specific terminology, such as the definitions of “drug” and “new drug” under Indian law; and outlines strategies for speeding up the approval processes and optimizing registration of prescription medicines in India.   Keywo...

The International Council for Harmonisation (ICH) announced that “excellent progress” has been made over the past year in advancing guidelines in the areas of pharmaceutical quality, safety and efficacy, including the adoption of the widely awaited guideline on continuous manufacturing (CM).   These achievements were announced on 22 November following its meeting held in Inchon, South Korea. The meeting was held in parallel with meetings of ICH’s ten working groups and...

The definition of “dietary supplement” in the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic (FD&C) Act includes several provisions limiting what can be a legal dietary supplement based on the ingredients used and delivery form, as well as whether a substance has a history of drug use. This article explores the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) use of this last provision, often called “drug preclusion.” The authors examine the history of the provision, Congress’s purported purpose for ...