Developing therapies for rare diseases involves complex incentives, unique requirements, and often extensive patient engagement. The authors of RAPS’ Orphan Drug Development for Rare Diseases , Sundar Ramanan, PhD, MBA, and Sunny Kamlesh Dave, MPharm, recently took time to discuss with RAPS Senior Editor Gloria Hall the importance of orphan drugs, the peculiarities and challenges of obtaining an orphan drug designation (ODD), and what is covered in the book. During a “m...

The US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) approved 50 new drug therapies in 2021. While the figure is a slight decrease from 2020 , more drugs were designated as first-in-class and used the accelerated approval pathway than in previous years.   The approvals reported by CDER do not include biologics license applications (BLAs) approved by FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER). In 2021, CBER approved...

This article discusses advertising on streaming media and what regulatory reviewers need to take into consideration when reviewing online videos.   Introduction Television. One word, many meanings – it could be the wide-screen home TV, the latest Hulu-exclusive series we binge-watch on an iPad, or the 5-minute Snapchat original series that releases a new episode every week. There is no shortage of places for consumers to view video content outside of a traditional ...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday issued a draft guidance to help manufacturers set up inspection testing programs to ensure that their injectable drugs are free of visible particles.   The 18-page draft guidance "addresses the development and implementation of a holistic, risk-based approach to visible particulate control that incorporates product development, manufacturing controls, visual inpsection techniques, particulate identification, inves...

This article provides a summary of drugs and biologic products that have recently become available for the pediatric population in the United States. It highlights prescription products for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), psoriasis, active polyarticular juvenile idiopathic arthritis (pJIA), active psoriatic arthritis, Ebola virus treatment, spinal muscular atrophy, and bladder dysfunction that became available in 2019, 2020, and 2021 after completion of pe...

  A new draft guidance from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gives cell and gene therapy developers a detailed framework for the conduct of umbrella trials, offering the potential for enhanced speed and efficiency in early-stage clinical trials.   In the umbrella trials envisioned under the draft guidance, two or more versions of a cellular or gene therapy product would be studied for one specific disease using just one trial design, shared infrastructure, a...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Wednesday issued a draft guidance to help manufacturers control microbiological contamination of their non-sterile drugs (NSDs). The guidance stems from FDA’s concerns over a high number of adverse events and recalls associated with contaminated products.   The agency reports receiving 197 adverse event reports from microbiological or fungal contamination of non-sterile products between 2014 and 2017. Of these, 32 were deeme...

Slipshod testing of two over-the-counter (OTC) analgesics along with improper marketing of one led the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to issue three warning letters to manufacturers located outside the US. Additionally, the agency continued its crackdown on imported hand sanitizers.   The recipients of the warning letters, which were all issued in mid-September, include Laboratorio Pharma International in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, a manufacturer of antibiotics and ...

The US Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (FDA’s CDER) on Monday issued a draft guidance that provides generic drug applicants with answers to commonly asked questions in the drug quality area. The new guidance is designed to provide an immediate response to such questions to reduce the number of controlled correspondence on identical topics.   The guidance, which is in a question-and-answer format, covers FDA’s policies on quality...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) criticized a Turkish manufacturer of over-the-counter drugs for failing to test incoming ingredients and to test products before releasing them to the market in a recent warning letter . The company was also warned for its lax approach to stability testing.   The 13 May letter to Istanbul-based Gulsah Uretim Kozmetik Sanayi Anonim Sirketi follows up on FDA’s review of a 23 April response to request for records. The firm is the...

The US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) Office of Generic Drugs recently issued a revised Manual of Policies and Procedures (MAPP) describing the agency’s internal procedures for handling generic drug labeling changes, including listing the responsibilities of the internal FDA staff responsible for managing these labeling changes.   The 16-page MAPP implements Section 10609 the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) which was enacted in 2010 and add...

A newly finalized guidance on bispecific antibodies from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) notes that although bispecific antibodies can generally be characterized in the same ways as standard monoclonal antibodies and manufacturing processes may be similar, some scientific and regulatory considerations are unique to bispecifics.   According to a 24 May agency announcement , while the regulatory pathway for evaluating monoclonal antibodies is “well established...