Fibrogen Inc. said senior management’s prep for an upcoming FDA advisory committee meeting included a surprise. The internal review unearthed a primary cardiovascular safety analysis of roxadustat for treating anemia of chronic kidney disease (CKD) that included post-hoc changes to the phase III study’s stratification factors.
The use of dermal fillers has spiked in recent years for a number of reasons, but so have the associated adverse events. An FDA advisory committee made several associated recommendations, including that a patient’s vision be prospectively evaluated prior to any peri-ocular treatment with fillers, but this could be a simple count-the-fingers check, something that should not appreciably increase procedure times or affect the volume of procedures.
The latest global regulatory news, changes and updates affecting medical devices and technologies, including: FDA seeks nominations for blood products advisory panel; Massachusetts hospital hit for HIPAA access non-compliance; No reports recorded for Medtronic recall; Tillis, Cotton eye patent examiner practice for Section 101 problem.
Interludes of classical music. Little kids talking in the background. Unmuted mics as panelists multitask. Gurgles of “underwater” sound. Periods of silence as speakers forget to unmute. And then the technical problems – lots of them. Such are the challenges of addressing a virtual FDA advisory committee in the time of COVID-19.
An FDA advisory panel struggled at times to give the agency clear advice on the role of materials in device failures, but the panel nonetheless lent its support to the notion that device makers should disclose all materials used to fabricate device implants in product labels.
“It’s a rare window into seeing how the FDA makes decisions because the proceedings are open unlike many of the other decisions they make,” Audrey Zhang, a medical student at the New York University School of Medicine, said on why she decided to embark on crunching the numbers from 376 votes by FDA advisory committee meetings from 2008 to 2015.
