Integra Lifesciences Holdings Corp. will not launch any new product in the EU before the U.S. because of the challenging requirements under the new Medical Device Regulation, Stuart Hart, chief medical officer at the Princeton, New Jersey-based company, told delegates at the LSX conference in London.

Abbott Laboratories received U.S. FDA approval for its Esprit below-the-knee (BTK) everolimus-eluting resorbable scaffold system for use in chronic limb-threatening ischemia well ahead of the expected second half 2024 time frame. Esprit showed clear superiority to angioplasty in the LIFE-BTK trial presented at last year’s Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics conference and published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The U.S. FDA has posted the long-awaited final rule for lab-developed tests, which amends the draft rule in a few key respects, but Reps. Diana DeGette and Larry Buchson, once again voiced their opposition to the rule. DeGette and Bucshon acknowledged that congressional inaction has left the FDA with few choices, but called again for passage of the Verifying Accurate, Leading-edge IVCT Development (VALID) Act, which they said is critical because “burdensome regulation of these medical products creates uncertainty in the future of innovation and patient care.”

Device recalls may seem an ordinary fact of life, given that some are declared for reasons as innocuous as a change of labeling, but the five device recalls announced by the U.S. FDA April 24 and 25 include one product withdrawal. The recall for the Nimbus series of infusion pumps and administration sets by Infutronix LLC cited instances in which patients were subjected to out-of-specification analgesia flow rates, and the company has seen fit to remove the existing inventory from the market.

Front Line Medical Technologies Inc. recently received CE mark for its Cobra-OS, the smallest REBOA (resuscitative endovascular balloon occlusion of the aorta) device for use in emergency situations on the market. The company believes that Cobra-OS could help save the lives of patients during traumatic bleeding situations as it could buy valuable time until definitive care can be provided.

The U.S. FDA’s device center launched a new health care program designed to provide patients with a seamless home health care environment that stitches together various health care functions into an integrated system that eases the patient’s use of such technologies. The initiative, part of the agency’s health equity agenda, will rely on augmented and virtual reality and requires the development of a prototype that will be rolled out in underserved areas with several overarching objectives, including the democratization of clinical trial participation.

The EU has declared that it will investigate the anticompetitive practices of the People’s Republic of China where medical devices are concerned, a clear sign that device makers in the European Union succeeded in persuading Brussels that the Made in China 2025 initiative represents an intolerable form of economic adversarialism.

South Korean med-tech companies Nunaps Co. Ltd. and Share & Service are the latest to clear domestic approvals for digital therapeutics as the government ramps up R&D funding for artificial intelligence-based medical technologies.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s final rule for noncompete clauses in employment contracts would seem to endanger life science patents and trade secrets, but there is a question of whether the agency stepped outside its statutory bounds in forming the rule. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has already filed suit on the rule, but Joshua Rich of McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP told BioWorld, that the Chamber is unlikely to be the last entity to file suit over the rule.

The process of manufacturing autologous T-cell therapies is technically challenging when compared with other oncology drugs, making the overall cost of developing CAR T therapies significantly higher. A challenging reimbursement environment for drugs listed on China’s National Reimbursement Drug List also means that most patients will have to pay out of pocket to access CAR T therapies. Taken together, complex logistics – production, manufacturing and supply chain – and complicated administration requirements are key bottlenecks that inflate the input costs involved in developing these specialized treatment options.