The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday announced it will go ahead with a survey of healthcare professionals (HCPs) on how they are impacted by prescription drug promotion aimed at a professional audience.   The announcement comes after the agency consulted on its plans for  the survey in March 2018 and follows two earlier surveys that looked at HCPs’ attitudes toward direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising. The survey will also include questions about HCPs’...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday sought to quell a series of media reports raising questions with the agency’s declining inspectional work around the globe and concerns with the agency’s oversight of generic drugs. FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb and FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Director Janet Woodcock wrote in an extended statement that recent press reports inaccurately raised questions with the quality of the US drug supply and wron...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued draft guidance on Wednesday to aid sponsors in the clinical development of drugs and biologics for the treatment of eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE). The 13-page draft guidance document describes the agency’s clinical trial recommendations for EoE drugs. These relate to trial population and design, safety and efficacy considerations, clinical outcomes assessments, as well as pediatric considerations. The clinical developmen...

With an aim to harmonize the technical and scientific standards for generic drugs across borders, the International Council on Harmonization (ICH) on Wednesday released a reflection paper outlining an approach to begin supporting such efforts. The reflection paper offers recommendations to develop a series of ICH guidelines on standards for demonstrating bioequivalence for non-complex and more complex dosage forms and products. It also describes the remit of the Informa...

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce (E&C) on Wednesday sent letters to the three insulin manufacturers serving the US: Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi, seeking more information on the root causes of the rising cost of insulin. First discovered more than 100 years ago, average insulin prices nearly tripled between 2002 and 2013 and then nearly doubled between 2012 and 2016, with patients bearing the brunt of those price spikes. Now, just a day after two moth...

The House Oversight Committee and the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday held hearings addressing the rising cost of prescription drugs, with both committees featuring mothers of insulin-dependent children, including one whose daughter died because of rationing due to the cost of insulin. Senate Finance Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and others stressed the need for an investigation into the rising cost of insulin. “We need to continue to have a strong research engine ...

As a new Congressional term kicks off, Democrats and Republicans in Congress, as well as the Trump administration, are pushing policies to lower prescription drug prices.   On Wednesday, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) introduced a bill, dubbed the Safe and Affordable Drugs from Canada Act of 2019, that would allow for Americans to import drugs from Canada. The bill mirrors the bill by the same name championed by the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) set an all-time record for new drug approvals in 2018 with 59 novel drugs and biologics approved by the agency's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER).   The number of new molecular entities (NMEs) and biologics approved by CDER surpassed the agency's previous record of 53 approvals in 1996 and is a significant jump over the 46 new drugs approved in 2017 . Those figures do not include products approved by FDA's Center...

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) on Monday released recommendations from its European network of pediatric research (Enpr)-EMA working group on opportunities during various stages of development to consult with pediatric research groups.   “Enpr-EMA suggests that all companies consider using these opportunities in a spirit of shared learning about the best way to collaborate during [pediatric investigation plan] planning,” EMA writes, noting that companies can benef...

How a generic drug is priced may be the difference between whether it experiences a shortage or not, a new study published in Value in Health found. The study of commonly used outpatient generic drugs from 2008 to 2014 found that the prevalence of shortages decreased from a peak in 2011-2012 to less than 4% of the overall sample by the end of 2014. Generic drug prices “were strongly predictive of drug shortages,” the researchers found. But competition and market si...

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) announced Friday that it has found that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not always ensure that all information is consistently recorded and evaluated when making orphan drug designation determinations. The missing of these critical steps by the agency in some cases means that FDA reviewers do not fully understand the context of a drug’s intended use for the rare disease, GAO said. “The Commissioner of FDA shou...

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...