LONDON – It began life as a legal tidy-up of post-Brexit regulatory issues, but the Medicines and Medical Devices bill that emerged from its final reading last week is in a significantly different form. Most notably, the bill legislates for the creation of a national register of all implantable medical devices and the appointment of a patient safety commissioner to act a single port of call and advocate for patients when devices fail.
The latest global regulatory news, changes and updates affecting medical devices and technologies, including: HHS posts request for information for Lyme diagnostics; NICE: Stak device backed by one 35-enrollee study.
Regulatory snapshots, including global submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Alveo, Cardiacsense, Kantaro, Surgical Planning Associates, Visby.
In its first decision on excessive drug pricing, the European Commission (EC) accepted a commitment Feb. 10 from Aspen Pharmacare Holdings Ltd. to immediately drop the price of six essential cancer drugs in Europe by an average of 73% and to continue to supply the drugs for at least the next five years.
Another monoclonal antibody therapy has entered the pandemic fray with the FDA granting emergency use authorization (EUA) for bamlanivimab (LY-CoV555) 700 mg and etesevimab (JS016 or LY-CoV016) 1,400 mg as a cocktail for treating mild to moderate COVID-19 in patients aged 12 and up at high risk for progressing to severe COVID-19 and/or hospitalization.
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Abbvie, Adaptive Phage, AIM Immunetech, Astrazeneca, Biontech, Eli Lilly, I-Mab, Merck, Panbela, Pfizer, RDIF, Regeneron, Sanifit, Sanofi, Takeda, Vico.
Among the low-hanging fruit for pruning back U.S. drug prices is the development of generics referencing complex drugs, a category that includes drug-device combination products and nonbiologic drugs with a complex molecular base, route of administration or formulation, such as abuse-deterrent opioids.