The UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) last month responded to comments on its proposal to implement packaging safety features under the EU Falsified Medicines Directive (FMD) .   The safety features, which include requiring a unique identifier comprised of a 2D data matrix code and human readable information and an anti-tampering device on the packaging of certain medicines, are detailed under Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/16...

The UK’s Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock sent letters Friday on Brexit preparations for medicines supplies, offering details that the pharmaceutical industry group said need to be fleshed out further in the lead up to March 2019. In the event of a no deal scenario, the revised cross-Government planning assumptions show that there will be significantly reduced access across the short straits crossings into Dover and Folkestone for up to six mon...

The European Parliament’s International Trade Committee (INTA) on Monday voted to adopt a draft opinion supporting changes to an amendment that would allow for manufacturing waivers to supplementary protection certificates (SPCs).   In the EU, SPCs extend the 20-year patent protection period for medicines by adding up to five additional years of market exclusivity to approved drugs and biologics. The additional exclusivity period is meant to compensate for the lapse be...

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced Monday low levels of a probable human carcinogen have been detected in a third sartan made the second India-based company—Aurobindo Pharma—to have been linked to the international valsartan scandal.   The notice follows on the heels of the EMA’s decision to extend its review to include medicines containing an additional four sartans, with the one impacted by the suspension of Aurobindo Pharma’s European certificate of s...

As part of the European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) alignment with the inflation rate, the agency announced on Tuesday that general, non-pharmacovigilance for applicants and marketing authorization holders are increasing by 1.7% on 1 April 2018. “All applications received by 31 March will be charged the current fee and reduction rates. Applications received after that date will be charged the adjusted fees,” EMA said. “For scientific advice and protocol assistance, the cut...

The findings come from two new reports, one looking at data collected from WHO's Global Surveillance and Monitoring System over the last four years and another that pooled data from 100 literature reviews to examine the public health and socioeconomic impact of substandard and falsified medicines. Based on the reports, WHO says that as many as one in 10 medicines sold in low- and middle-income countries is either substandard or falsified, at a cost to the global health s...

Welcome to our Asia Regulatory Roundup, our weekly overview of the top regulatory news in Asia. Australian Generic Medicine Work-Sharing Trial Misses Completion Target A work-sharing group involving Australian regulators has reported the results of its first collaborative assessment of a generic medicine. The review of the filing took about nine months, four months longer than the collaborators had targeted at the start of the project. Officials from Australia’...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this week began adding four-letter meaningless suffixes at the end of newly approved biologics' nonproprietary names, signaling a shift in policy from only adding the suffixes to biosimilars' nonproprietary names since 2015. The first additions of the meaningless suffixes came for Thursday's approval of Roche's Hemlibra (emicizumab-kxwh), one of the first new medicines in nearly two decades to treat people with hemophilia A, ...

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) on Tuesday released for consultation a new guideline to help companies develop new medicines, direct-acting antiviral agents, monoclonal antibodies and vaccines to treat and prevent infections caused by the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). According to EMA, RSV is a common respiratory virus that usually causes mild, cold-like symptoms that most recover from, though RSV can be serious, especially in infants and older adults. Curr...

Trade associations, manufacturers, academia and researchers have offered their opinions on the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) draft strategy for crafting pharmacopeial standards for biologics, according to a report issued Monday. In general, MHRA says the responses supported the value of standardization, and found that areas where standards could add value included providing guidance and ensuring consistency for product characterizat...

Last month, the European Commission adopted two legal acts seeking to improve patient safety through good manufacturing practices (GMP) that ensure the highest quality of medicines for investigational and human use. One of the acts is an  implementing directive  that sets out principles and guidelines of GMP in medicines where the manufacture or import is subject to a manufacturing authorization ( see Article 40 of the Community code Directive (2001/83/EC) ). The ...

The World Health Organization (WHO) has received a recommendation from an expert committee to develop an Essential Diagnostics List (EDL). The committee said the decision to begin developing such a list, agreed to earlier this month, may initially focus on in vitro diagnostics, with initial proposed priority areas including tuberculosis, malaria, HIV and hepatitis B and C. According to WHO , the list "should expand to other areas including other antimicrobial...