The U.S. FDA approved 21 drugs in December, bringing the total for the year to 191, a 26% increase to the 151 U.S. approvals in 2022. New molecular entities (NMEs) fell from six in November to three in December, bringing the annual number of NMEs approved to 55.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, is not taking no for an answer after the CEOs of Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and Merck & Co. Inc. declined an invitation to appear before the committee to explain their U.S. drug prices.

The EMA has once again come in behind the U.S. FDA, granting market access to 77 new products in 2023, fewer than half the 157 approvals the FDA processed in the 11 months from January through December 2023.

Six weeks after the U.S. FDA issued an alert, the EMA is following suit and starting a review of the safety of six approved CAR T-cell cancer therapies, following 23 reports of patients developing secondary cancers. The EMA said such malignancies were considered “an important potential risk” at the time of approval and are included in the risk management plan. Close monitoring is in place, with companies required to conduct long-term safety and efficacy follow-up studies and to file safety update reports.

The U.S. FDA is promising to make 2024 a “breakout” 12 months for gene therapies, with a number of initiatives to promote clinical development, approvals and uptake. “This is a great year to focus on gene therapy,” said Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the FDA. “I just want to focus on moving ahead gene therapy,” he told attendees of the J. P. Morgan Healthcare Conference on Jan. 8.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published new enablement guidelines Jan. 10 to provide more consistency across technologies to ensure patent applications truly enable the breadth of their claims in keeping with the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision last year in Amgen Inc. v. Sanofi SA.