Incremental budget increases and continuing resolutions that hold FDA spending of both tax dollars and user fees to the previous year's level aren't going to cut it as the agency faces the growing challenge of reviewing more and more innovative technologies on the condensed timeframe of priority review.

The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), of Boston, said it released an updated draft evidence report assessing the comparative clinical effectiveness and value of treatments for rheumatoid arthritis.

Think Surgical Inc., of Fremont, Calif., won good news from the U.S. FDA, which cleared the company's Tsolution One total knee application for use in total knee arthroplasty (TKA). The Tsolution One total knee application includes computed tomography-based 3D presurgical planning software, providing surgeons the ability to design and prepare the patient's knee joint replacement plan. During surgery, the physician puts the patient's pre-planned procedure using the robot into effect, with the goal of precisely placing the knee implants.

The FDA’s Office of Pediatric Therapeutics will hold a public workshop at the agency’s Silver Springs, Md., campus Nov. 12 to discuss pediatric patient-specific engagement in the development of clinical trial endpoints for rare diseases.

As the U.K. pursues its divorce from the EU, smaller U.S. drug and device companies could be caught disproportionately in the collateral damage. Many of them already struggle with the cost of duplicative regulatory requirements involved in marketing their products in the EU, but those costs could increase under Brexit, according to a report released last week by the U.S. International Trade Commission on trade-related barriers impacting U.S. small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that export to the U.K.

The U.S. FDA has given Pq Bypass Inc. the greenlight to conduct a pivotal trial aimed at assessing its Torus stent graft in the treatment of peripheral artery disease (PAD) in the superficial femoral artery. The TORUS-2 study is the Milpitas, Calif.-based startup's second IDE approval in less than two years and the first pivotal IDE for an SFA stent graft since W.L. Gore & Associates Inc.'s Viabahn device, which notched an initial PMA approval in 2005.

The U.S. FDA has posted a draft guidance that will overwrite a 2014 draft guidance dealing with MRI compatibility for medical devices, but at least one observer is concerned that the agency posted draft as standards-setting organizations are rewriting their own related device performance standards, a fact that could draw out the time to completion of the draft.

HONG KONG – Taiwan's National Health Insurance Administration has added Gilead Sciences Inc.'s Biktarvy (bictegravir + emtricitabine + tenofovir alafenamide), a once-daily single tablet for the treatment of adults with HIV-1, to its list of reimbursed medicines.

HONG KONG – I-Mab Biopharma (Shanghai) Co. Ltd. has received IND approval from China's National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) for its CD73 antibody, getting the go-ahead for a phase I/II trial of TJD-5 in patients with advanced solid tumors.