A top official from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said he wants to see something similar to the agency’s Project Orbis program developed for cell and gene therapies, as the involvement of other “high-income countries” could help attract developers, asserted Peter Marks, director of FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), at the Biopharma Congress on 13 February.   At the meeting, FDA officials offered their perspectives on other policy ar...

Peter Marks, director of Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), attributes an increase in the amount of regenerative medicine advanced therapy (RMAT) requests approved for cell and gene therapies to sponsors “getting the hang” of the agency’s expectations for designation requests.   Marks spoke at the California Separation Science Society’s (CASSS) meeting on 8 June on cell and gene therapies. The meeting was h...

Updated 25 May 2022 to correct ASGCT's name. Wilson Bryan director of the US Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Tissues and Advanced Therapies (OTA) in the agency’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, told a 19 May meeting  of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT) that the division is undertaking a series of internal measures to improve communications with sponsors and to widen its messaging.   These measures are being taken to com...

The digital health sector is experiencing enormous growth globally. Briefly, digital health is a branch of healthcare that is primarily focused on improving health using internet, digital, and mobile technologies. One such novel subclass of the digital health ecosystem is digital therapeutics (DTx). DTx are “software-driven,” nonpharmacological therapeutic interventions that can improve the accessibility and effectiveness of healthcare. This article explores the current di...

Industry, medical societies and other stakeholders have weighed in on draft guidance from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) detailing how sponsors that want to study multiple versions of cell and gene therapies could combine them in a single “umbrella” trial.   The draft guidance, released in September 2021, outlined FDA’s proposed thinking for how this process would work. For cell and gene therapies intended to treat a single disease, sponsors would typically ...

A growing workload and insufficient staffing have prompted the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Office of Tissues and Advanced Therapies (OTAT) to institute new processes to expedite its reviews of new cell and gene therapies, said OTAT Director Wilson Bryan at a 6 December webinar sponsored by the Alliance for a Stronger FDA.   At the webinar, Bryan was asked to discuss the impact of the projected workload for OTAT, projections for approving new cell and gene t...

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 lack of consistent testing in measuring product quality for cell and gene therapies is a major deficiency found by US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reviewers in its information requests (IRs) to manufacturers in their submission of biologics license applications (BLAs).   This observation was made by Kedest Tadesse, senior research manager for Agency IQ, which recently compiled a survey of deficiencies identified in IR letters in FDA’s review of five approved ...

An advisory committee to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has said animal models are “problematic” in assessing the safety risks of gene therapies derived from adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors.   FDA’s Cellular, Tissue, and Gene Therapies Advisory Committee (CTGTAC) held a virtual meeting on 2 September to discuss the best animal models to study to assess safety of these products.   “AAV are a popular type of gene therapy, yet we are seeing a variety o...

In recent years, new cell and gene therapies have been developed and approved in a number of countries, including Japan. The Japanese government fully supports academia and the pharmaceutical industry in the research and development of these innovative therapies, and in 2019, revised the Act on Securing Quality, Efficacy, and Safety of Products Including Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices to enact the conditional early approval system for accelerating the development and ...

Academic centers should establish risk management programs to successfully commercialize cell and gene therapy products and to be a viable partner with contract research organizations (CROs) and manufacturers in developing these therapies.   So asserted Lutz Uharek, a professor of internal medicine and founder and CEO of Xencura, at RAPS Euro Convergence 2021 on 12 May in discussing some of the challenges and opportunities for academic centers in developing cell and ge...

Several drugmakers and Health Canada are suggesting changes to the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) recently released draft guidance on developing gene therapies for neurodegenerative diseases.   Released in January, the draft guidance provides recommendations for the development, testing and clinical study of gene therapies for neurodegenerative diseases. The guidance also discusses considerations for chemistry, manufacturing and controls (CMC) and offers an ov...