With today’s 18-5 vote in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP) to send Stephen Hahn’s nomination to the full U.S. Senate, the oncologist who currently serves as chief medical officer at the MD Anderson Cancer Center is just a step away from being confirmed as the next FDA commissioner.
Commissioner of the FDA for five years starting in 1984, Frank Young relished his position “at the vortex of controversy” as he sought to deal with the AIDS crisis and public furor over drug tampering, said his son, Jonathan Young, co-founder and chief operating officer of South San Francisco-based Akero Therapeutics Inc. Post-FDA, Frank Young would help grapple with the opioid epidemic as well – a scourge that began with the passage of the Compassionate Pain Relief Act (CPRA), passed the year he was appointed. Young, 88, died Nov. 24 of B-cell lymphoma.
How much Senate Democrats oppose President Donald Trump's new nominee to take over the reins of the FDA could depend on whom they dislike or distrust more – Stephen Hahn, the nominee, or Brett Giroir, who just became the new acting FDA commissioner.
Glaxosmithkline plc has won FDA approval to market Nucala (mepolizumab) for use in children as young as 6 with severe eosinophilic asthma (EA). The therapy already had FDA approval as an add-on maintenance treatment for kids with the same condition ages 12 and older. Approval of the sBLA, submitted last November, catches the U.S. market up to the EU, where Nucala has been approved as an add-on treatment for children ages 6 to 17 since August 2018.
It's been a busy September for Ardelyx Inc. so far. Less than two weeks after the Fremont, Calif-based company reported promising pivotal data for tenapanor in chronic kidney disease patients with hyperphosphatemia, the sodium hydrogen exchanger 2 (NHE3) inhibitor won FDA approval for use in irritable bowel syndrome with constipation (IBS-C).
DUBLIN – Shares in Pharnext SA plunged by more than 40% Friday on news that the FDA requires the company to undertake a second phase III trial of its Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease type 1A (CMT1A) therapy PXT-3003.
Drug pricing legislation will be high on the to-do list when the U.S. Congress returns from its August recess next week, as both the Senate and the House are expected to take action this month on competing packages of provisions aimed at controlling prescription drug prices.
HONG KONG – Samsung Bioepis Co. Ltd., a South Korean biosimilar developer, said the FDA approved its July 2018 application for Hadlima (adalimumab-bwwd), a biosimilar referencing Abbvie Inc. blockbuster TNF-blocker Humira (adalimumab).
Device makers have reporting responsibilities for devices used in combination products per an FDA final rule published in 2016, but the FDA said in the 2018 draft guidance that the applicant of a drug- or biologic-led combo product must evaluate whether a malfunction of the device component would suggest a hazard for similar combinations using that device. That provision appears in the final rule, and thus puts the onus on makers of drugs and biologics to do a job device makers say is theirs to handle.
Eli Lilly and Co.'s FDA win with Baqsimi (glucagon) nasal powder, the first non-injected therapy to gain clearance for emergency treatment of hypoglycemia, makes the rescue of severely hypoglycemic patients quicker and easier, and coming down the pike are more treatments that could simplify therapy.
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