The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is not just seeing an increase in drug shortages but also a spike in the intensity and duration of shortages, according to agency presentations at an FDA/Duke Margolis Center for Health Policy event on Tuesday. Matthew Rosenberg, an economics staffer at FDA, looked at drug shortages in terms of occurrence, duration, intensity and public health impact. Combining data from FDA archives and IQVIA national sales database, Rosenbe...

US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) researchers are working to develop a new informatics model to reduce the reliance on dogs to conduct studies in animal drug development.   The agency’s new study, which was proposed on Friday, is intended to aid animal drug developers in conducting certain research without the need for product testing on dogs.   Animal drug developers would be able to use the new model as a mechanism for comparing blood levels of certain oral...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Wednesday finalized guidance for drugmakers on identifying and evaluating early signals that could indicate whether a drug might have adverse effects on the testes and when clinical trials are necessary to assess those risks.   Specifically, the 14-page guidance lays out recommendations for identifying nonclinical signals that suggest risk of testicular toxicity; conducting nonclinical assessments to further evaluate the ris...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday released its priorities for addressing compounded drugs in 2018 after years of developing policies to improve its oversight. Background In recent years, FDA has worked to update its policies on compounded drugs in response to a 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak linked to the New England Compounding Center that led to at least 60 deaths and new requirements brought on by the Drug Quality and Security Act (DQSA) of 201...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has come a long way when it comes to locally acting orally inhaled and nasal drug products (OINDPs) and in the next five years of generic drug user fees, the agency is looking at further progress on some unique challenges, according to a regulatory science report on OINDPs. Background FDA’s Office of Generic Drugs (OGD) explained how the performance of OINDPs has been notoriously difficult to characterize because of a lac...

The House Energy & Commerce (E&C) Committee on Wednesday released an 80-page report outlining issues and recommendations to improve the 340B drug pricing program, which helps reduce the prices of certain drugs for participating hospitals, health centers and other entities that provide care for vulnerable patients. The 80-page report follows an October House E&C hearing in which hospital executives pushed back on the idea that the 340B program should be narrowed o...

2017 was a year of firsts for the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), with initial approvals in at least five medical conditions and other firsts that might not end up on the final scorecard, like the first biosimilar cancer treatment or the first immediate-release opioid with abuse-deterrent properties. And though the total 46 approvals is the second-highest number of approvals by CDER ever, according to the CDER ...

President Donald Trump's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary nominee Alex Azar told the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday that drug prices "are too high" and he will work to bring them down, though, "There's no silver bullet." Azar previously told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that drug prices will be his top priority. The comments on Tuesday followed questions raised by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and others regardi...

Industry groups representing generic and brand-name drugs, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and pharmacies offered their comments on a November meeting held at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on possible solutions to increase competition and lower pharmaceutical prices in the US. The organizations discussed differing views on what can be done, with the generic group noting its own declining prices and possible ways to combat abuses, the brand-name industry point...

With a nonprofit that paid almost $100 million in 2015 financial grants to patients now saying that it will not offer such payments in 2018, Gregory Demske, chief counsel to the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the Inspector General (OIG), sent a letter on Thursday seeking help from the pharmaceutical industry group PhRMA in providing free drugs.  The situation arises as OIG found that the nonprofit, known as the Caring Voice Coalition (CVC), may h...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday announced that shortages of IV saline are expected to improve early this year as Baxter – a leading producer of IV saline fluids – has said all its facilities on Puerto Rico have now returned to the commercial power grid. The good news on Baxter comes as the agency said all other companies that were on an initial list of drugs considered at risk of potential shortages – because the drugs were largely or entirely...

In the last days of 2017, the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Office of Prescription Drug Promotion (OPDP) issued a warning letter to over-the-counter (OTC) drugmaker Avanthi, Inc. for omitting risk information in a panel for the weight loss drug Lomaira (phentermine hydrochloride USP). The warning letter brings the total number of enforcement letters issued by OPDP in 2017 to four (three warning letters and one untitled letter), a record low for the agency. Whi...