This article provides a high-level overview of the elements of prescription drug reimbursement in Canada and discusses the costs, processes and reimbursement plans associated with a number of federal health agencies and payers and describes some of the variety of drug plans in place. The Regulatory–Reimbursement Interface Community (out-patient) drug reimbursement is usually considered after a drug has received regulatory approval from Health Canada. Regulatory proces...

As the nearly 1,000-page 21st Century Cures Act is implemented in phases, the full impact of the law is just beginning to be realized, and for one provision, the law has created a new program that rewards companies for developing products that the government purchases and often pays to develop. Background Under section 3086 of the Cures Act , the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must establish a new priority review voucher (PRV) program for material th...

A recent study in Health Affairs suggests that drugs given an expedited review by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) offer greater health gains than drugs that receiving a conventional review. But experts caution that the study might only show incremental benefits. The study, conducted by Peter Neumann, director of the Center for the Evaluation of Value and Risk in Health and three of his colleagues at Tufts Medical Center, compared the change in quality-adjuste...

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Monday released a new strategy document to aid in the development of new treatments for Gaucher disease, a rare lysosomal storage disorder. Given the limited number of patients worldwide with Gaucher disease, EMA and FDA put forth two possible approaches to better facilitate investigations of such products: Extrapolation across age groups within a single drug development program...

Welcome to our Asia Regulatory Roundup, our weekly overview of the top regulatory news in Asia. TGA Starts Accepting Priority Review Notifications, Implements Revised Orphan Drug Program The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) of Australia has opened its priority review pathway. TGA is now accepting notifications from sponsors who plan to apply for priority review status to accelerate the approval of their medicines in the coming months. Officials at TGA are ...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took major steps toward increasing generic drug competition on Tuesday by releasing a list of off-patent pharmaceuticals with limited or no competition, and by prioritizing the review of abbreviated new drug applications (ANDAs) for which there are fewer than three ANDAs approved for the reference listed drug. Both moves seek to increase generic drug competition and lower the cost of pharmaceuticals in the US. The generic dr...

In preparation of its commitments under the second Generic Drug User Fee Amendments (GDUFA II) , the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Monday released a draft guidance laying out how sponsors can qualify for shorter review times for priority generic drugs. Under GDUFA II, FDA agreed to shorten its review of eligible priority generics by two months if sponsors submit a complete and accurate pre-submission facility correspondence (PFC) two months ahead of their a...

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) on Thursday launched a public consultation to gather input on a future reflection paper discussing the regulatory requirements for developing drugs to treat chronic non-infectious liver diseases. According to the agency, there is an unmet medical need for drugs to treat chronic non-infectious liver diseases such as non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) and primary biliary cholangitis (PBC). And wh...

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) on Wednesday announced that it has accepted five additional therapies to its PRIME (PRIority MEdicines) scheme, bringing the total number of products accepted to the program to 25. The agency also said it denied seven requests for eligibility, which seeks to streamline the development of promising new therapies through earlier scientific advice and increased engagement between EMA and sponsors. While this latest batch of recomme...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday approved the first-ever treatment for a form of the rare pediatric Batten disease, bringing Biomarin its second lucrative priority review voucher (PRV). FDA approved Brineura (cerliponase alfa) to slow the loss of walking ability in symptomatic pediatric patients three years old and older with late infantile neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis type 2 (CLN2), also known as tripeptidyl peptidase-1 (TPP1) deficiency. ...

With an aim to avoid thousands of US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) employee layoffs, House and Senate committees on Friday released a draft bill to reauthorize the user fee programs for pharmaceuticals, generic drugs, medical devices and biosimilars from 2018 to 2022. Forged via negotiations between FDA and the various industries dating back to 2015, and racing to beat a September deadline, the bills sequentially increase the amount of user fees FDA can assess for r...

A team of officials from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) say that drugs approved following a priority review are three-and-a-half times more likely to receive a boxed warning after entering the market. Unlike standard reviews, which can take up to ten months, drugs that treat serious conditions or offer a significant improvement over existing treatments can qualify for a shorter, six-month review. However, the authors note that because drugs given priority rev...