With the recent hack of Change Healthcare back in the news, a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives took up the subject of cybersecurity, which included only a couple of mentions of medical devices. However, witnesses at the hearing emphasized the role of the federal government in thwarting foreign cybersecurity threats against health care facilities, with John Riggi of the American Hospital Association stating, “we need the [federal] government to go after bad actors overseas.”
Nxera Pharma Co. Ltd. announced that its partner, Neurocrine Biosciences Inc., is advancing NBI-1117568 to phase II trials for treatment of schizophrenia and other neuropsychiatric disorders.
The U.S. FDA granted fast track designation to Telix Pharmaceutical Ltd.’s TLX101-CDx for glioma imaging as the firm prepares to file its NDA in the first half of 2024, a Telix spokesperson told BioWorld.
South Korea’s Eubiologics Co. Ltd. said it gained the World Health Organization’s (WHO) prequalification designation on April 16 for its simplified oral cholera vaccine, approved as Euvichol-S.
To take clinical trial innovation to the next level, the U.S. FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) is opening the CDER Center for Clinical Trial Innovation. The center, known as C3TI, “will be a central hub within CDER to support the implementation of innovative approaches to clinical trial design and conduct,” said Kevin Bugin, CDER’s lead for C3TI and deputy director of operations in the Office of New Drugs.
Preclinical data of rabbits having convulsions has prompted the U.S. FDA to place a clinical hold on Neumora Therapeutics Inc.’s phase I study of NMRA-266 in healthy adults. Neumora said about 30 participants had been dosed so far in the single ascending and multiple ascending dose study, with no evidence of convulsions seen.
Some gene therapies could be big winners under the changes the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is proposing to Medicare’s new technology add-on program (NTAP) for its fiscal 2025 inpatient prospective payment system.
The Hatch-Waxman Act provides a safe harbor that allows importation of an FDA-regulated article that would otherwise be deemed a case of patent infringement so long as the importation is for purposes reasonably related to obtaining regulatory approval. Edwards Lifesciences Corp. sued Meril Life Sciences Pvt Ltd. for importation of heart valves in a manner that Edwards argued was infringement under Hatch-Waxman, but while the Federal Circuit ruled 2-1 against Edwards, the dissenting opinion recommended an appeal to a full 12-judge panel that could reverse this outcome.
Samsung Bioepis Co. Ltd., of Incheon, South Korea, is the latest to announce a win in the biosimilar space, gaining MFDS approval of Epyztek (SB-17) as the country’s first biosimilar to Stelara (ustekinumab, Janssen Pharmaceutical Inc.) on April 11.
By a unanimous 12-0 vote, the U.S. FDA’s Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee concluded that new evidence support the use of minimal residual disease (MRD) as an accelerated approval endpoint in multiple myeloma (MM) clinical trials. The FDA will now consider the recommendation, which, if incorporated into future studies, could dramatically shorten some drug developer timelines and offer more options for treating the aggressive bone marrow cancer.
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