The US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Task Force on Drug Shortages supports the idea of creating a new rating system to help drug purchasers, including consumers, better understand the quality management of drug manufacturing facilities. “This idea envisions that pharmaceutical companies could, at their discretion, disclose the rating of the facilities where their drugs are manufactured,” Janet Woodcock, director of FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, w...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday finalized a question and answer guidance on the type of manufacturing facility information that should be included in applications submitted to the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research and the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. FDA explains that the guidance is meant to help companies understand how not to submit extraneous information or misplaced or missing information that could result in delays, Refu...

Two House committees on Thursday advanced on party-line votes Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) bill to allow for the negotiation of certain medicine prices as part of plans to bring down costs in the US. No major amendments were adopted in either the Energy & Commerce or the Education & Labor committees’ meetings, although the amendments in the E&C meeting ranged from carving out specific disease treatments from negotiations to requiring the Health and Human Services Sec...

For each of the last five years, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has set generic drug approval records, but questions have lingered on whether these high approval numbers are translating into competition. FY 2019 figures show a total of 1,171 generic drug approvals (935 full approvals and 236 tentative approvals), which breaks FDA’s previous all-time record of 971 full and tentative approvals for FY 2018 . And although the abbreviated new drug application (...

The Pharmaceutical Inspection Co-operation Scheme (PIC/S) is seeking comments on revisions to two parts of its GMP Guide (Annex 2A and Annex 2B) that deal with the manufacture of advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs) and biological medicinal substances and products for human use. PIC/S explains that draft Annex 2A accounts for international developments in the regulation of ATMPs, with particular attention to the European Commission guideline on GMP for ATMPs, whi...

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) late Friday announced that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) drug pricing bill would reduce federal direct spending for Medicare by $345 billion from 2023 to 2029, but it would also lead to a reduction of approximately 8 to 15 new drugs coming to market over the next 10 years. The CBO report comes as rhetoric on both sides of the aisle has picked up in recent weeks, with industry group PhRMA referring to the bill, known as HR 3, a...

From industry to academia, commenters have argued that the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) drug approval standards are becoming inappropriately low and that the required postapproval evaluations are either inadequate or left undone. But three senior FDA officials offered several counterpoints on Monday at the fifth annual Biopharma Congress in Washington, DC. Janet Woodcock, director of FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, explained that the agency ...

The Nevada Department of Health and Human Services this week sent letters to 21 diabetes drug manufacturers seeking $17.4 million in penalties for non-compliance with a new price transparency law. “This legislation requires the Department to compile a report of information related to prescription drugs used to treat diabetes. As part of the legislation, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) can impose a penalty for companies who fail to provide the required...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday released a warning letter sent in August to China-based drug testing facility Shanghai Institute of Pharmaceutical Industry for refusing an inspection. FDA had planned a surveillance and pre-approval inspection of the facility from 29 November to 4 December 2018, but the company told FDA’s China office in a written response that it was refusing the inspection. "Under section 501(j) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Co...

As Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) continues to push his own competing drug pricing legislation in the Senate, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) unveiled her proposal to lower prescription drug prices on Thursday, with a plan likely to please more liberal Democrats and further distance Republicans. At the heart of Pelosi’s plan is the idea to allow Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar to select between 25 and 250 drugs annually and directly negotiate with manufactur...

More than 50 academics and researchers from Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins and other universities around the world are calling on the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to not replace its original reviews of medical products with an “integrated review” because of the valuable information that would be lost. The researchers claimed that such a shift would deprive them of information and data on the clinical studies and trials submitted to FDA, information on the postmar...

In a report to Congress, the US Food and Drug Administration said that there is a public health need for additional pediatric information in labeling for over one-third of approved orphan indications that are relevant in the pediatric population. FDA research, conducted as part of the FDA Reauthorization Act of 2017  (FDARA), found that of all drugs that were approved for an orphan indication between 1 April 1999 and 31 August 2018, a total of 548 orphan indications we...