Acting US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Ned Sharpless on Thursday announced that the agency would finalize guidance on developing treatments for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) by the end of September. The 9-page draft guidance, first released in February 2018 , incorporated parts of a draft guidance put together by the ALS Association, known for its viral "ice bucket challenge," which FDA said provided the agency "with scientific advice and insig...

The Right to Try Act has officially been in place for one year and although just two patients have publicly announced that they have used the law to gain access to experimental therapies, hundreds more may follow. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday offered a new website to explain what patients and what investigational drugs are eligible under the law. The website includes eight questions and answers on the law, clarifying that companies are not r...

In a perspective published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, bioethicists Holly Fernandez Lynch and Steven Joffe of the University of Pennsylvania warn that federal "right-to-try" legislation could undermine the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) public health mission and will have a limited impact on improving patient access to investigational products. Background The debate around right-to-try centers around patients' ability to access unappr...

US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb on Thursday announced that a web platform to help patients find information on clinical trials for cancer drugs would be expanded to include orphan disease drugs. The decision follows a House Energy & Commerce Committee hearing last month on a bill that passed the Senate in August and seeks to speed and increase access to experimental therapies for terminally ill patients. In written comments to...

The House Energy & Commerce Committee on Tuesday held a hearing to discuss a "Right-to-Try" bill passed in the Senate that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is seeking to change. The hearing discussed a bill that would seek to undercut FDA’s oversight of a program, known as expanded access, whereby terminally ill patients and their doctors can request access to an investigational drug outside of a clinical trial. Right-to-Try laws have now passed in 37 states...

A new paper by a team of US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials finds that only about 30%of drugs requested for expanded access go on to be approved by the agency. "Expanded access provides just that: access. There is no guarantee that the product sought will be effective and/or safe, much less that it will be effective and/or safe for the particular patient," the authors write. Background In recent years, the debate over patient access to unapproved drugs has...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has laid out the process by which doctors can access an investigational drug for treatment in an individual patient in an emergency situation, both during and after normal business hours in a new Manual of Policies and Procedures. The release of the MAPP coincides with a bill passed in the Senate and making its way through the House that aims to ease the process by which terminal patients can access such investigational dr...

What do a former prosecutor living in Arizona and unexpectedly diagnosed with neuroendocrine tumors by a specialist at the Mayo Clinic and referred for treatment in Switzerland, a Coloradoan who was also diagnosed and referred to Switzerland for treatment, and a Los Angeles-based lawyer who tried to get into immunotherapy trials but was denied have in common? They all say they obtained treatment from a Houston-based oncology center that has extended their lives than...

The Senate on Thursday passed via unanimous consent (meaning there was not actually a vote) a bill that claims to improve terminal patients' access to experimental drugs but, if passed in the House and signed into law, may further burden and undermine the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The bill is part of what's known as the "Right-to-Try" movement, which has been sweeping across state legislatures  (37 states now have such laws), and is part of a bid to in...

Following the House of Represenatatives' passage of the bill to reauthorize US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) user fees on Wednesday, the White House doubled down on its earlier call to amend the agreements so that FDA is entirely funded by medical products industries. "The Administration urges the Congress to provide for 100 percent user fee funding within the reauthorized programs," the White House said in a statement . "In an era of renewed fiscal restraint,...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted more than 99% of requests for patients to access unapproved drugs and biologics in fiscal year 2016, according to data released last week. Through FDA's expanded access program, the agency allows patients with serious or life-threatening diseases to access unapproved drugs. Under the program, physicians can request access to a drug for individual patients or a group of patients under an expanded access investigational ne...

Advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen is calling on members of Congress to oppose several "right to try" bills, warning that the bills would undermine the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and provide false hope to patients. In recent years more than 30 states have adopted right to try laws that seek to provide terminally ill patients access to unapproved drugs, with several new congressional efforts to create a federal right to try program. The White House has signaled...