The Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions committee on Wednesday advanced seven bills, including one that would reauthorize the rare pediatric priority review voucher (PRV) program through 2022, and one bill that would add the Zika virus to the tropical disease PRV program. The advancement of the bill sponsored by Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) to extend the pediatric PRV program comes as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) told the Government Accountability Office ...

In looking for ways to create more competition in the US pharmaceutical industry and drive down rising prices, a new Senate bill proposes to prioritize certain generic drug applications and to create a priority review voucher program to incentivize the development of new generics. Sen. Susan Collins’ (R-ME) bill, known as “A bill to increase competition in the pharmaceutical industry,” would amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to require the US Food and Drug A...

The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) said Wednesday in a new report that it’s still too early to assess whether the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) three-year-old pediatric priority review voucher (PRV) program has stimulated the development of drugs to treat or prevent rare pediatric diseases. The PRV program offers vouchers that companies can win for gaining approval of new rare pediatric treatments affecting fewer than 200,000 people, more than half o...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accepted for review the New Drug Application (NDA) for Sanofi’s investigational type 2 diabetes treatment on Monday and granted the use of another Priority Review Voucher (PRV), which speeds up FDA’s decision by four months. In redeeming the voucher, Sanofi had to pay a $2.7 million fee in addition to the standard new drug filing fee of $2.4 million. Retrophin sold the PRV to Sanofi last May for one of the highest amounts eve...

Members of the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations subcommittee were briefed on recommendations at a hearing Friday for improving the nation's biodefence strategy against natural and man-made threats. The recommendations are particularly timely as legislators and public health officials scramble to mount a response to the Zika virus outbreak across Latin America and the Caribbean. Many of these recommendations come from the Blue Ribbon Study Panel on ...

One week after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a public health emergency in response to Zika-linked clusters of microcephaly, it and authorities in the US and EU are mobilizing to accelerate the development of treatments and diagnostics for the disease. Obama Calls for $1.8 Billion in Funding On Monday, the White House announced it will ask Congress for more than $1.8 billion to establish an emergency fund to combat the Zika virus in the US and abroad. N...

A group of health advocacy organizations are calling on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) to tighten requirements for obtaining priority review vouchers for drugs for tropical diseases. In a letter addressed to HELP Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-TN) on Tuesday, seven organizations including Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi), Center for Global Health Policy, TB Alliance, Treatment Acti...

Senators on both sides of the aisle are trying to incentivize the development of new drugs for newborn babies and medical countermeasures via a new exclusivity voucher and a priority review voucher system that are similar to the voucher programs already linked to tropical and rare pediatric disease treatments. Neonatal Exclusivity Voucher Last month, Sen. Robert Casey (D-PA) introduced a bill, known as Promoting Life-Saving New Therapies for Neonates Act of 201...

As the Senate debates whether to extend or make permanent the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) priority review voucher (PRV) program, a Harvard medicine professor says that so far, at least for tropical diseases, there's "little reliable evidence" that the program has spurred novel drug development. Background Since 2007, the FDA has issued seven PRVs (the most recent of which came earlier this month), which allow sponsors to speed the review of any one...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday announced that it would increase the rare pediatric disease priority review voucher fee rate for FY 2016 by about $200,000. The new rate -- $2,727,000 – is effective on 1 October and will remain in effect for the next year. FDA previously set the fee rates at $2,562,000 for FY 2015 and $2,325,000 for FY 2014. The new rate is based on FDA's estimate that the cost of a standard review for new molecular entity (NME) new dr...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has raised the tropical disease priority review fee rate for fiscal year 2016 to about $2.73 million, which is effective from the beginning of next month through 30 Sept, 2016. The new rate is about $200,000 more than last year's rate , but more than $2m less than the rate for fiscal year 2012. Back in 2008, FDA issued guidance for industry on tropical disease priority review, detailing the way in which the vouchers can be sol...

An unusual regulatory incentive used to accelerate the review of a small number of drug products has just sold to the French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi for the record-setting sum of $245 million. Background The incentive, known as a Rare Pediatric Disease Priority Review Voucher (Pediatric PRV), is an integral part of a program meant to spur the development of new therapies of rare pediatric diseases. The Pediatric PRV program was established under the Food and Dru...