The FDA has made allowances for a third COVID-19 vaccine dose to protect certain adults with compromised immune systems. The amended emergency use authorization amendments allow for booster doses of mRNA vaccines from Pfizer Inc.-Biontech SE and Moderna Inc.
According to the White House, the FDA is poised to allow COVID-19 booster shots from Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc., the two mRNA vaccines, but only for those people with compromised immune systems. The FDA announcement was anticipated to be as early as today, Aug. 12, and the boosters could be available as quickly as this coming weekend.
With generic competition on the horizon for its older sleep disorder drug Xyrem, Jazz Pharmaceuticals plc gained an added indication for its GABA B receptor agonist Xywav as the FDA approved it for idiopathic hypersomnia.
Auctus Surgical Inc. took another step toward straightening out one of the most vexing problems in pediatric scoliosis with the announcement of FDA breakthrough device designation for its vertebral tethering system. The system offers a non-surgical option to correct spinal curvature without use of fusion or braces and its dynamic magnetic technology enables adjustment as a child grows, avoiding the overcorrection that plagues the only other tethering system currently available.
The FDA’s device center has generated a raft of warning letters for products related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and released another six such letters for the week of Aug. 9. However, the ostensible justification for those warnings varies considerably, as does the elapsed time between the date of the warning letter and its issuance on the FDA’s warning letter webpage.
The FDA’s latest version of the intended use rule is a complex, 61-page document that cleaned up a few things from the previous version and added a phrase or two to the regulatory lexicon. Randy Prebula, a partner in the D.C. office of Hogan Lovells U.S. LLP, told BioWorld that while the FDA left itself some wiggle room by avoiding a prescriptive use of language in the rule, the final rule is unlikely to be the final word on the intended use question.
The digital therapeutics market has seen an explosion of innovative products and interested investors. Regulators, too, have acknowledged their potential to improve outcomes in patients with chronic or debilitating conditions – often at lower cost and with less side effects than traditional drug therapies. To that end, the FDA has granted breakthrough device designation to Swing Therapeutics Inc. for its prescription digital therapeutic for the management of fibromyalgia.
Fibrogen Inc. was braced for receiving a complete response letter (CRL) and it got one. The FDA suggested it would not approve roxadustat’s NDA for treating anemia of chronic kidney disease until more clinical work is conducted. In July, the FDA’s Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee said basically the same thing as it voted 13-1 against approval for the nondialysis population and 12-2 against approval for patients on dialysis unless more trial data are submitted.
The FDA reported that Boston Scientific Corp. has recalled several models from the Ingenio line of cardiac electrophysiology devices in a class I action that affects 48,000 devices. The recall was triggered by the risk that these devices will inappropriately shift into safety mode and thus be unable to provide pacing, as demonstrated by 65 such incidents and three instances in which patients needed external pacing in response to the problem.
The FDA has given the green light to Spintech Inc. for its STAGE (strategically acquired gradient echo) magnetic resonance imaging device. The post-processing software platform allows MRI technicians to capture higher-quality brain images in significantly less time than standard approaches.
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