The Asia-Pacific region, which inlcudes Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and South Korea, has a significant number of clinical trials in advanced therapies, with China ranking second globally. Manufacturers in other countries in the region, such as Japan, Australia, South Korea, and Singapore, have submitted marketing authorizations applications for advanced therapies and received approvals. Regulators recognize this emerging trend in dynamic resear...

The first somatic human variant database has been recognized by the US Food and Drug Administration for inclusion in its Public Human Genetic Variant Database listing. The move opens the door for developers of tumor profiling tests to use the database to support clinical validity claims in regulatory submissions.   A portion of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s Oncology Knowledge Base (OnkoKB) received the recognition under FDA’s database recognition program. ...

Recent draft guidance from the US Food and Drug Administration addresses the non-clinical safety data to support investigational new drug applications (INDs) for individualized antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) products, a type of personalized medicine.   The guidance, issued on 26 April, addresses INDs for ASOs that treat a severely debilitating or life-threatening disease caused by a unique genetic variant. Such diseases may be amenable to RNA-directed treatment.   ...

Purveyors of unapproved cellular-derived treatments are about to find out what happens when the US Food and Drug Administration ends its period of enforcement discretion for these regenerative medicine products.   A three-year clock for enforcement discretion began when FDA announced its regenerative medicine policy framework in November 2017; the COVID-19 pandemic prompted a 6-month extension, announced the agency last summer. Time is now up, and no more extensions ...

Following an announcement by outgoing President Donald Trump on Friday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is moving to end the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) unapproved drugs initiative, which the agency claims has led to increased drug prices for some older drugs. FDA’s unapproved drugs initiative can be traced back more than a decade to the agency’s 2006 compliance policy guide (CPG) on marketed drugs without approved new drug applications (NDAs...

This article discusses the scope and purpose of the special designation for regenerative medicine advanced therapies (RMAT) created by the passage of the 21st Century Cures Act. The authors explain the benefits expected to be realized with RMAT and provide a tally of products receiving the special designation to date and a current count, by year, of products for which RMAT designation has been requested.   Introduction Section 3033 of the 21st Century Cures Act, titl...

This article discusses the advent of bespoke therapies, defined as the tailoring of medical treatment to the individual characteristics or symptoms and responses of a patient during all stages of care and as a new frontier beyond personalized medicine. The author covers the revolutionary genetic tools implementing such therapies and the clinical and nonclinical safety perspectives for bespoke therapies. The author concludes that with bespoke therapies we are entering a new...

A subgroup of the EU’s Heads of Medicines Agencies (HMA) issued new recommendations Friday on conducting complex clinical trials.   The HMA’s Clinical Trials Facilitation Group (CTFG)—coordinated by the Danish Medicines Agency—identified eight key recommendations to establish a framework on the initiation and conduct of complex trials for the development of personalized medicine. They were prepared “in recognition of the fact that the development of personalized medici...

As the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Sentinel Initiative approaches its 11 th anniversary, the agency on Wednesday laid out its vision for enhancing the system over the next five years.   First launched as a pilot program in 2008, the Sentinel Initiative encompasses FDA’s effort to meet obligations set by Congress in the 2007 Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act to develop a system for active postmarket risk identification and analysis for medical p...

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) on Wednesday announced it has begun publishing reports detailing its decision-making on whether newly approved drugs to treat rare diseases still qualify for orphan designation when they receive marketing authorization. In the EU, drugs intended to treat diseases affecting fewer than five in 10,000 people in the EU qualify for orphan designation, which provides authorized medicines with ten years marketing exclusivity and reduced fees....

Welcome to our Asia Regulatory Roundup, our weekly overview of the top regulatory news in Asia. Australia Bans Transvaginal Mesh Products Following Risk-Benefit Review Australia has banned transvaginal mesh products used in the treatment of pelvic organ prolapse. The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) took the action after concluding the risks of the controversial treatment outweigh the benefits. Patients and healthcare experts around the world have questi...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday launched a new policy framework for regenerative medicine, building off a previous framework from 2005, as part of efforts to bring new cell, stem cell and tissue products to patients as efficiently as possible while managing the proliferation of unscrupulous actors hawking unproven therapies. FDA’s announcement included the release of two new draft guidance documents – one on ways to expedite approvals for regen...