Royal Philips NV recently received some good news from the U.S. FDA which cleared its latest transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) ultrasound transducer, amidst ongoing efforts with the regulatory body to address problems with its sleep business. The X11-4t Mini 3D TEE transducer is 35% smaller than previous versions and is designed to provide cardiologists with high quality 3D images of the heart and its internal structure.

Hologic Inc.’s focus on women’s health is looking like a brilliant move as the company lands U.S. FDA clearance for its Genius digital diagnostics system with the Genius cervical artificial intelligence algorithm, making it the first digital cytology system with clearance, the company said.

Edwards Lifesciences Corp. received some good news with the earlier-than-expected U.S. FDA approval of its Evoque tricuspid valve replacement system. The company beat out rival Abbott Laboratories for the honor of being the first transcatheter therapy to receive FDA approval.

Cognito Therapeutics Inc. closed a $35 million extension to the series B fundraising round it started in 2023, bringing the total for the round to $108 million and the total funding to date to $128 million. Cognito is developing Spectris, a wearable medical device that provides visual and auditory stimulation for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological disorders.

Jaguar Gene Therapy LLC’s IND application for JAG-201, a gene therapy for a genetic form of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and Phelan-McDermid syndrome (PMS; 22q13.3 deletion syndrome), has been cleared by the FDA.

23andme Holding Co. has received FDA clearance of its IND application for 23ME-01473 (‘1473), a dual mechanism antibody and natural killer (NK) cell activator intended to treat cancer.

The U.S. FDA dropped the final rule for the Quality Management System Regulation (QMSR), the long-awaited blending of the agency’s own Quality System Regulation (QSR) and ISO 13485.

The U.S. FDA added a second pulsed field ablation (PFA) system to the approved list with its greenlight for Boston Scientific Corp.’s Farapulse for treatment of atrial fibrillation (AF). Farapulse joins Medtronic plc’s Pulseselect, which garnered FDA approval in December. Two other PFA devices scored regulatory wins since the new year: Biosense Webster inc.’s Varipulse secured approval from the Japanese Ministry of Health Labor and Welfare and Sichaun Jinjiang Electronic Medical Device Technology Co. Ltd. got the nod from China’s National Medical Products Administration.

The U.S. FDA’s latest draft guidance for the use of real-world evidence (RWE) is a substantially heftier document than the 2017 final guidance that will shortly become obsolete, and buried in all those extra pages are a few key details.

The U.S. FDA has redrafted an existing guidance for third-party reviews of 510(k) submissions to include submissions under the emergency use authorization (EUA) program, which generally speaking should be good news. The problem with the draft is that these third parties will have to interact frequently and substantively with the FDA in EUA reviews, and the lack of prescribed timelines in the FDA draft suggests that while the use of third parties may help the agency manage any future EUA workloads, the total turnaround time for these applications might not be significantly better than was seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.