The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) offered some advice to help ensure smoother reviews of abbreviated new drug application (ANDA) post-approval supplements and addressed how certain changes should be categorized at the 10 November meeting of the Association for Accessible Medicines” (AAM) GRx+Biosim conference.   Officials were asked to address common issues affecting ANDA post-approval chemistry, manufacturing and controls (CMC) submissions. Agency officials ...

For drugs and biologics that receive accelerated approval, could information drawn from real-world data sources supplant traditional postapproval clinical trials to confirm that the therapies have benefit? Real-world data (RWD) are not yet robust enough to confirm the benefit of drugs awarded accelerated approval based on surrogate endpoints, answered the authors of a recent study.   “The findings of this cross-sectional study suggest that none of the 50 [Food and Drug...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched its accelerated approval program in 1992, offering a pathway to bring life-saving drugs and biologics to the market faster. After nearly 30 years, could substantial reforms be on the way?   At RAPS Convergence 2021, David Dorsey of Janssen R&D, said Congress could choose to make changes to the accelerated approval program through the upcoming reauthorization of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA). Congress has...

During a listening session convened by the Friends of Cancer Research (FOCR) with Reps. Diana DeGette (D-CO) and Fred Upton (R-MI) on their nascent Cures 2.0 package, Richard Pazdur, director of the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Oncology Center of Excellence (OCE) defended the agency’s accelerated approval program.   (RELATED: Cures 2.0: Discussion draft signals impact on FDA, creation of ARPA-H , Regulatory Focus 23 June 2021)   Asked by DeGette w...

Three papers published as Viewpoints in JAMA Internal Medicine this week highlight the rationale provided by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on the agency’s approval of aducanumab (Aduhelm; Biogen Inc), implications the approval could have for the Medicare program, and a contemplation on the future of FDA’s accelerated approval pathway.   Writing on behalf of FDA, Billy Dunn, MD, director of the Office of Neuroscience with FDA, and colleagues said the agenc...

The Office of Prescription Drug Promotion (OPDP) at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) wants to know how to better present disclosure information about products with accelerated approval to patients with cancer and their caregivers.   In two studies recently announced in the Federal Register , OPDP is seeking to confirm prior research on how patients interpret disclosure information for a product approved under FDA’s accelerated approval pathway on a direct-to-...

After drugmakers voluntarily withdrew four indications for their cancer drugs in recent months, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday said it would convene an advisory committee to review six more oncology indications with accelerated approval after confirmatory trials failed to verify their clinical benefit.   Over the course of three days in April, FDA’s Oncology Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) will review six indications for Roche’s Tecentriq (atezol...

Since late December, four drugmakers have voluntarily withdrawn indications for their cancer drugs amid an industry-wide review of accelerated approvals by the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Oncology Center of Excellence.   In each of their statements announcing the withdrawals, Bristol Myers Squibb, AstraZeneca, Merck and Roche said the withdrawal decisions were made in consultation with FDA as part of an industry-wide review of accelerated approvals with con...

Regulators from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), European Medicines Agency (EMA) and Health Canada gave their perspectives on different issues related to accelerated approval pathways in their respective jurisdictions at the DIA Global Annual Meeting.   All three regulators offer their own form of accelerated approval based on less comprehensive clinical data than a traditional marketing approval would require. In the US, that pathway is dubbed accelerated ap...

A weekly update on new drug approvals and indications from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).   New approvals Tauvid nabs approval as first drug to aid imaging of tau pathology FDA has approved Avid Radiopharmaceuticals’ radioactive diagnostic agent Tauvid (flortaucipir F18 injection) as the first drug to image tau pathology, a distinctive characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease in the brain.   The drug is indicated for intravenous administration bef...

Earlier this week, an FDA advisory committee recommended that the agency withdraw Amag Pharmaceutical’s preterm birth drug Makena, a treatment that brought in more than $1 billion in sales before failing a confirmatory trial. The agency is now faced with the task of whether to take the committee’s vote and pull Makena from the market or allow it to remain until another confirmatory trial can be completed. Keeping Makena on the market would also present a rare situation,...

Closing out RAPS’ Regulatory Convergence on Tuesday afternoon, Peter Stein, director of the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Office of New Drugs (OND), confirmed to attendees that sponsors and other interested stakeholders looking to retrieve some of the data currently available in FDA-released drug approval packages would need to use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain some of that information under a new plan. While not getting into the specifics of...