This article details how regulatory intelligence can help medtech companies assess the impact of the new EU legislative framework for in vitro diagnostics (IVDs). Using the example of COVID-19 antigen tests, the author looks at how regulatory intelligence helped device manufacturers manage the changes in regulations during the pandemic and how the lessons learned can support the industry in assessing and planning for the impact of the new legislative framework for IVDs tha...

The US Food and Drug Administration this week issued its first set of warning letters for marketing adulterated or misbranded COVID-19 antibody tests.   The letters, sent to Medakit Ltd. of Hong Kong,  Antibodiescheck.com of United Arab Emirates, and Sonrisa Family Dental dba www.mycovidtest19.com of Chicago, cited a range of violations. These included offering test kits for sale in the US directly to consumers for at-home use without marketing approval, cleara...

While championing advances made in diagnostic technology in recent years, top officials from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are calling for a new regulatory framework for in vitro clinical tests (IVCTs) and laboratory developed tests (LDTs). The call comes as lawmakers from both parties on Thursday released a new 200-page discussion draft of a bill that would establish such a framework, incorporating many of the reforms FDA has recommended, including a pr...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday published two new draft guidance documents that seek to support the development of treatments that address underlying genetic mutations that often cause or contribute to diseases, and another discussing how to determine if an in vitro diagnostic (IVD) device used in a study must undergo its own FDA review, distinct from a drug study. "New drugs are being developed based solely on their ability to target these und...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Wednesday announced it has cleared a next-generation sequencing (NGS) test developed by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) that can detect 468 unique gene mutations and other molecular biomarkers in a patient's tumor. The test, referred to as MSK-IMPACT (Integrated Mutation Profiling of Actionable Cancer Targets), was already approved for use with samples from patients in New York by the New York State Department of ...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Monday detailed its plans to make it easier for companies developing direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic health risk (GHR) tests to get those tests on the market. To do so, FDA is proposing a model similar to a pilot for digital health products, by which companies can be pre-certified to market low-risk software-based devices following an assessment of their systems for software design, validation and maintenance. Similarly, F...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Monday sent a warning letter to Massachusetts-based Magellan Diagnostics, a subsidiary of Meridian Bioscience, finding the company made significant changes to its lead-testing devices without notifying the agency, among other violations. The warning letter, which follows an inspection of the North Billerica, MA, site last May and June, notes that Magellan made a "significant change by adding to the device labeling an ins...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday authorized the first direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic health risk tests for 10 diseases and conditions. The authorization for the genetic testing company 23andMe means individuals for the first time will be able to use these tests to understand their genetic predispositions for certain diseases and conditions without first seeing a doctor. “Consumers can now have direct access to certain genetic risk information,”...

Small biopharmaceutical companies, often known as the drivers of innovation, face a number of unique challenges in bringing new treatments, particularly for rare diseases, to market, Richard Moscicki, deputy director for science operations at the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, and P.K. Tandon, senior vice president of Sanofi Genzyme, wrote. In an article published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine , the a...

Two months after saying it would not finalize guidance on the regulation of lab-developed tests (LDTs), the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday published a discussion paper with some hints as to how it would like the discussion and regulations on this thorny issue to move forward. As FDA explains, “LDTs play an increasingly important role in the provision of high-quality health care and many laboratories perform good validation of their LDTs and provide high...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday said it will wait for the new administration and halt the finalization of guidance that would have changed the way lab-developed tests (LDTs) are regulated. Tara Goodin, press officer for FDA told Focus : "FDA believes that patients and health care providers need accurate, reliable, and clinically valid tests to make good health care decisions—inaccurate or false test results can harm individual patients. We have been...

The age of precision medicine, with treatments targeted to specific patients based on a companion test identifying the need for such a treatment, is pushing the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to release new and more detailed draft guidance on how companies can co-develop a therapeutic alongside what the agency is calling an in vitro companion diagnostic device, or IVD companion diagnostic. The draft released Thursday, entitled "Principles for Codevelopment of an...