The U.S. FDA released two draft guidances in the third week of March 2024, one of which is a modest edit of an existing guidance for pre-submission activities between the agency and manufacturers.
After more than a decade of industry pleading for guidance on Orange Book patent listings, the U.S. FDA is finally planning on answering that request this year. If the guidance that’s produced reflects the FTC’s position that device patents can’t be listed for combination products, it could overturn years of accepted practice and possibly hinder the development of new, more advanced drug administration technologies.
Are there other guidances the U.S. FDA should release as final without going through the draft and public comment process first? That’s one of the questions the FDA wants stakeholders to comment on as it updates its best practices for guidance.
Given the challenges of generating chemistry, manufacturing and control information on the compressed timelines used in the EMA’s Priority Medicines scheme and the U.S. FDA’s breakthrough therapy designation program, the two regulators published a joint question-and-answer document discussing quality and good manufacturing practice aspects of applications for both programs, which are aimed at speeding development of innovative products to address unmet medical needs.
Instead of the two-step process that’s been the typical path for interchangeables in the U.S., Amgen Inc.’s Wezlana got a green light Oct. 31 from the FDA as both the first approved biosimilar and interchangeable to Johnson & Johnson’s inflammatory disease drug, Stelara (ustekinumab).
The U.S. FDA has broken out of the summer guidance doldrums in fine form, inking a series of nine draft and final guidances in the first half of September alone. The latest bolus includes a revised version of a guidance for the breakthrough devices program and two draft guidances for devices for weight loss, giving industry plenty to mull over as the final days of fiscal year 2023 trickle away.
To streamline the development of biosimilars and align it with current analytical science, regulators across the globe are reevaluating a routine requirement for comparative clinical efficacy studies for biosimilar candidates.
Following a comment-and-review process waylaid by the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. FTC is finalizing its revised guides on the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising.
In releasing a revised guidance June 30 detailing the requirements of the new Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program, the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services addressed some of the issues raised in recent constitutional challenges to the guidance and the underlying negotiation provision in the Inflation Reduction Act.
The U.S. FDA’s September 2022 guidance for clinical decision support (CDS) software was controversial the moment the agency posted the document, prompting the filing of a citizen’s petition five months later. The CDS Coalition has penned a June 8 letter to FDA commissioner Robert Califf in an effort to draw a reaction from the agency, but the letter was accompanied by a summary of an analysis of CDS software with a machine learning (ML) component that suggests that such products that are in development may have to be reconsidered.