If the Feb. 16 hearing before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee is anything to go by, it’s almost a given that the bipartisan Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM) Transparency Act will eventually be passed by the Senate. But its journey through the Republican-controlled House could be more uncertain in light of growing concerns about an “activist agenda” at the FTC.
The U.S. FDA granted Nanjing Iaso Biotherapeutics Co. Ltd. both regenerative medicine advanced therapy and fast track designations for its new drug, BCMA CAR T-cell therapy CT-103A (equecabtagene autoleucel), allowing it to speed up development and commercialization in the U.S. for the treatment of relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma.
Regulatory snapshots, including global submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Lumendi, Perfuze, Saniva, Zephyrus.
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Accord, Concert, Galera, Henlius, Kinnate, Redhill, Unravel.
The False Claims Act is perhaps the primary vehicle for U.S. federal authorities to extract penalties and fines from life science companies for violations of the law, but a new report by Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP suggests a mixed signal. The report notes that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) recovered $2.2 billion via the FCA last year, but while that is not a conspicuous number for the past decade plus, what was conspicuous was that those sums were recovered by the second highest level of FCA actions settlement in the history of the FCA, suggesting that DOJ is keen on enforcement with no regard to the size of the target.
The Feb. 13-14 meeting of the U.S. Medicare Evidence Development and Coverage Advisory Committee (MedCAC) was the second step in an effort by CMS to overhaul the coverage with evidence development (CED) mechanism. While the meeting took place with the overhang of the issue of coverage for U.S. FDA-designated breakthrough devices, it seems there are changes coming to the CED program regardless of the breakthrough devices question, such as the imposition of CED study milestones that would presumably thwart the never-ending CED study per a vote held during the hearing.
In decrying high U.S. drug prices, lawmakers often cite statistics about the number of patients who forgo or ration their prescriptions because of the out-of-pocket cost. Those discussions overlook the role payer utilization management tactics, including prior authorization, may play in patients abandoning their treatment, be it a specific drug or an imaging service.
A trio of proposed Medicare drug payment models that made a Feb. 14 debut in the U.S. is playing to mixed reviews. Two of the models to be tested by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Innovation Center seem to “address the real problems underlying prescription drug pricing – patient out-of-pocket expenses and better payment systems that reward the value a medicine brings to the patient and the overall health care system,” said John Murphy, chief policy officer for the Biotechnology Innovation Organization. But he called the third model, which is expected to restrict Medicare payment for some Part B drugs that have indications with accelerated approval, “an attack on the accelerated approval pathway,” which Congress mandated to spur investment and innovation in areas of unmet medical need.
Regulatory snapshots, including global submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Hologic, Qiagen.
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Albireo, Athersys, Avidity, Biocon, Healios, Lemonex, Mirum, Neurona, Soligenix, Verve, Viatris.
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