Following up on a bipartisan effort to keep down the costs of insulin, U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) reintroduced a bill on April 20 to ensure patients with diabetes can access the life-saving medicine without the excess costs associated with drug rebates and stymied competition.
The opioid crisis in the U.S. has not yet been resolved, but FDA commissioner Robert Califf said April 19 the agency could do more to resolve the crisis if Congress granted the agency the authority to require that new opioid analgesics offer superior safety relative to currently approved products. Califf laid the blame for the crisis on manufacturers in stating that drug makers had “let us down” in failing to develop novel oral analgesics that avoid the addictive properties that helped to fuel the opioid crisis.
The U.S. Senate Finance Committee has its work cut out for it as it crafts bipartisan legislation “that will take on the worst practices by drug-pricing middlemen and ensure that the prescription drug supply chain is pulling in the same direction: more competition and lower costs for patients and taxpayers,” committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said.
The success of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) over the past 20 years is one of the biggest challenges in reaching its goal of eliminating HIV as a global public health threat by 2030, members of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee were told as they moved toward reauthorizing the program for another five years.
Rapidai Inc. received FDA 510(k) clearance for its Rapid NCCT Stroke technology, the latest tool in its portfolio of non-contrast-based solutions for shock and trauma care. The company claims it is the first and only medical device cleared by the agency to detect suspected intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) and large vessel occlusion (LVO) from value-based CT imaging.
Danco Laboratories LLC’s Mifeprex (mifepristone) and Genbiopro Inc.’s generic got another temporary reprieve April 19 from a court order that would tighten access to the abortion drug.
Draeger Inc., of Telford, Pa., reported a recall of several lines of positive airway pressure (PAP) and other ventilation products in connection with problems seen in the adhesive used on breathing circuit components. Draeger said it has no reports of adverse events in connection with separation of the affected components during ventilation processes but has completed its testing of the corrective action and is working to replace the affected devices.
Largely underserved pediatric surgery patients in the U.S. could benefit from a new digital laparoscopic surgery solution said its developer Asensus Surgical Inc. Granted a pediatric indication by the U.S. FDA for the Senhance system in late March, the company plans to enter a market that has been largely ignored because of the difficulty performing digital laparoscopic surgery on smaller body patients.
Sanofi SA’s antitrust challenge of Mylan Inc.’s “exclusionary conduct” in the epinephrine auto-injector market met the end of the road April 17 when the U.S. Supreme Court denied cert.
The latest U.S. FDA emergency use authorizations to fall by the wayside, as COVID-19 continues to evolve, are the ones for the first Moderna Inc. and Pfizer Inc.-Biontech SE’s mRNA vaccines.
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