Although the need for COVID-19 boosters remains a tense debate among policymakers and scientific experts worldwide, the U.S. FDA is basing its Oct. 14-15 Vaccines and Related Biologics Products Advisory Committee meeting on the premise that vaccine boosters are needed.
FDA preemption of state liability law has proven controversial on a number of occasions, a fact of life resurrected by a case arising out of the Supreme Court of the State of Mississippi. The court declared that the FDA must invoke the rulemaking process for its regulation of medical product labels.
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Abbvie, Athenex, Brii, Enzyvant, Genentech, Kintor, Merck, Protagonist, Regeneron, Ridgeback, Roche.
The FDA’s push toward safety has included an examination of the materials used in medical devices, but a recent report sheds little useful light on whether these materials are provoking a response in patients.
The term of follow-up in clinical studies is the subject of massive speculation at FDA advisory hearings, but a recent FDA workshop suggests the agency may adjust its expectations, depending on the device. Darrell Brodke, of the University of Utah, said on a recent spinal device workshop that the two-year endpoint in some spinal device studies struck him as somewhat arbitrary, adding that a longer duration of follow-up is necessary to capture some device failures, but that two years is perhaps overly long where some other outcomes measures are concerned.
Shares of Protagonist Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:PTGX) climbed 93.9% on Oct. 11 after the FDA removed a full clinical hold on studies of the rusfertide, the company's investigational treatment for the blood disorders polycythemia vera and hereditary hemochromatosis. Triggered by a finding of malignant skin tumors in mice treated with the drug disclosed on Sept. 17, the FDA's three-weeks-ago hold had pushed Protagonist shares down by as much as 72%.
Cambridge, U.K.-based Astrazeneca plc has new data from its long-acting COVID-19 antibody combination, AZD-7442, which aims to provide longer protection, potentially for up to a year. Latest data show the intramuscularly injected drug achieved a statistically significant reduction in severe COVID-19 or death compared to placebo in non-hospitalized patients with mild to moderate symptomatic disease.
Nearly two years after confronting an initial complete response letter, Enzyvant Therapeutics Inc. has won FDA approval for a unique treatment for children born without a thymus, an ultra-rare condition leaving them deeply disadvantaged in fighting infections. The product, to be marketed as Rethymic, is the first thymus tissue product approved in the U.S.