With yet another deadline looming for passage of spending bills for the U.S. federal budget, Congress has drafted an omnibus spending bill that would extend coverage of Medicare telehealth services. The problem with the legislation in the eyes of many stakeholders is that the Verifying Accurate Leading-edge IVCT Development (VALID) Act is not part of the package that must be passed by Dec. 23, an omission that leaves lab-developed tests (LDTs) in a nether world of regulatory ambiguity.
The U.S. FDA has had a long-standing guidance dealing with drug manufacturing facilities that delay or deny FDA investigators’ attempts to inspect a manufacturing facility, but that policy was exclusive of device manufacturing facilities up until passage of the FDA Reauthorization Act (FDARA) of 2017. FDARA’s expansion of the policy to include device manufacturing facilities has prompted a rewrite of an existing 2014 guidance.
The FDA posted a recall announcement for two catheter kits made by Arrow International LLC, a subsidiary of Wayne, Pa.-based Teleflex Inc., due to problems with the connectors used in the kits. While no injuries or deaths have been reported, the problem could lead to embolism and/or delayed delivery of needed therapeutic fluids to patients, making this a class I recall due to the risk of injury and death.
U.S. federal authorities have made a lot of noise over inappropriate medical testing in the past two years, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but Paul Garcia, a partner in the San Diego office of Hooper, Lundy & Bookman PC, says this trend will not ebb at all in the coming year. Garcia told BioWorld that the lookback period for Medicare testing claims runs several years and that not only will enforcement results continue to surface next year, but also that the associated civil monetary penalties could force a testing lab to shutter its operations permanently.
Ferring Pharmaceuticals A/S has notched another U.S. FDA approval, this time for a bladder cancer treatment, Adstiladrin (nadofaragene firadenovec). The non-replicating adenovirus vector-based gene therapy’s approval comes only weeks after the FDA’s Nov. 30 approval of the privately held company’s Rebyota (fecal microbiota, live), the first fecal microbiota treatment in the U.S. Adstiladrin is another landmark, as the first FDA-approved gene therapy to treat high-risk, non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer. Saint-Prex, Switzerland-based Ferring said it anticipates the product becoming commercially available in the U.S. in the second half of 2023.
Building on the U.S. FDA approval of its Proclaim Plus spinal cord stimulation (SCS) system in August, Abbott Laboratories notched another approval with the FDA’s greenlight of the Eterna spinal cord stimulation system.
The actuary office at CMS reported that U.S. spending on health care grew by a modest rate of 2.7% in 2021, an outcome that would ordinarily prompt cheers by policy wonks who worry about the effect of ever-growing national health expenditures (NHEs) on the larger economy. The problem is that NHE had ballooned by more than 10% in 2020, a rate of growth that was driven in large part by the COVID-19 pandemic, but which statistically overshadowed the growth rate in 2021.
The U.S. FDA has had a long-standing guidance dealing with drug manufacturing facilities that delay or deny FDA investigators’ attempts to inspect a manufacturing facility, but that policy was exclusive of device manufacturing facilities up until passage of the FDA Reauthorization Act (FDARA) of 2017. FDARA’s expansion of the policy to include device manufacturing facilities has prompted a rewrite of an existing 2014 guidance.
Responding to concerns about corporate insider trading, especially among life sciences companies, the U.S. SEC unanimously adopted final rules Dec. 14 establishing a 90-day cooling-off period before trades can be made under 10b5-1 plans that provide a safe harbor to insider trading.
Given all the advances that have been made over the past decade, the U.S. FDA decided to issue a new draft guidance on developing antibacterial drugs to treat pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) rather than finalize the draft it issued in 2013. In releasing the new draft, the agency cited advancements made in nonclinical models, streamlined clinical development programs and growing interest in treatment-shortening combination regimens.
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