Moderna Inc.’s and Pfizer Inc.-Biontech SE’s COVID-19 bivalent boosters could be coming to the U.S. in the first week or so of September – even though the U.S. FDA just received the completed emergency use authorization (EUA) requests for the vaccines this week. The CDC is already taking pre-orders from providers, states and other jurisdictions for the yet-to-be authorized booster doses as part of its fall-winter booster campaign strategy. It also scheduled a Sept. 1-2 meeting of its Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, signaling that it expects the FDA to grant the EUAs by the end of August.
The recall of CPAP, BiPAP and ventilator devices made by Philips Respironics Inc., of Murrysville, Pa., is now in its second year, but the rate of reported adverse events was exceedingly low prior to the onset of the June 2021 recall. Those numbers continued to climb in May, June and July of 2022, however, reaching 48,000 medical device reports and 44 deaths said to be associated with the recalled devices, a pace that would easily overwhelm the volume of reports seen in the 12 months ending April 30, 2022.
Akadeum Life Sciences Inc. is rolling out a new dead cell removal kit using its patented microbubble technology. The research-use-only Dead Cell Removal Microbubble Kit (DCR kit) is currently available via direct sales to the U.S. market and on the company’s website. Akadeum’s DCR kit is designed to resolve current challenges in dead cell removal, which can hamper elimination of dead cells and the salvage of viable ones for research use.
Valentine’s Day is a great day for creating that tingly feeling, but Abbott Park, Ill.-based Abbott Laboratories believes that this is not a good sensation for patients who are in search of pain relief via spinal cord stimulation (SCS) devices. Thus, the company touts its Proclaim Plus as a system that delivers a tightly titrated charge to multiple sites on the spinal cord to generate an analgesic effect without that tingling sensation, an outcome the company said is preferred by 87% of those in need of SCS for pain relief.
Additional deaths believed to be associated with one of Foghorn Therapeutics Inc.'s lead candidates led the U.S. FDA to put a full clinical hold on its phase I study in relapsed and/or refractory acute myelogenous leukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome.
Medical device product liability litigation can take a number of seemingly unique twists and turns, but the case of Nelson v. Bard took a path that might have been predicted based on FDA-mandated labeling content. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed a lower court’s ruling that the instructions for use for a Bard inferior vena cava filter indemnified the company because the IFU listed the very events seen by the patient, undercutting the patient’s claim that Bard had failed to warn of these events.
Precision Diabetes Inc. (PDI) entered an exclusive agreement with Dxgen Corp. to introduce and distribute the Epithod Autodx point-of-care analyzer and multiple diabetes tests that run on the system within the U.S. The first available tests will include hemoglobin A1c, C-reactive protein and albumin, with the portfolio of tests expected to grow quickly.
In the six years since the U.S. FDA issued its final guidance on charging for drugs used under an investigational new drug (IND) application for clinical trials or expanded access, the agency has received several questions about how it is implementing regulations on the matters. To answer those questions, the FDA released a revised draft guidance that, when finalized, will replace the guidance issued in 2016.
It’s a step forward and a step back at Pfizer Inc. Even as Pfizer and its partner Biontech SE finished filing an emergency use authorization application with the U.S. FDA seeking to field an updated booster dose of their omicron COVID vaccine, the regulator has made a request of its own, for more data on the company's oral antiviral, Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir + ritonavir), for treating COVID-19. An Aug. 5, 2022, letter from the FDA stipulates post-EUA requirements for Paxlovid, including that Pfizer conduct a trial in patients with a relapse of COVID symptoms, longhand for a “rebound,” after an initial Paxlovid treatment course.
After nearly four decades as director of the U.S. NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), 81-year-old Anthony Fauci will be stepping down in December. He also announced Aug. 22 that he will be handing over the reins as chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation and as chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden.
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