The growing number of drugs gaining U.S. FDA approval for Alzheimer’s disease has kept their ability to reduce amyloid beta and tau proteins in the news, but the degenerative disease is not simply a matter of tangles and deposits. A loss of synaptic plasticity and disrupted neural networks underlie the signature impairment of memory and cognition – and those, researchers showed in a recent study in Brain, can be strengthened by non-invasive stimulation that addresses the brain’s electrical dysfunction.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been exceptionally active in the mergers and acquisitions space for the past 18 months, but Congress might soon amplify these agencies’ ability to suppress these transactions. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who chairs the competition subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a recent hearing that vertical mergers have flown largely off the enforcement radar, a problem that Congress could address by several means, including by providing the FTC with a heftier budget to pursue these cases.
Regulatory snapshots, including global submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Nesa Medtech.
Med-tech happenings, including deals and partnerships, grants, preclinical data and other news in brief: Aethlon, Biocardia, Blueriver Acquisition, Dante Genomics, EDP Biotech, Epigenomics, J&J, Kova International, LGC Clinical Diagnostics, Nectero Medical, New Day Diagnostics, Somalogic, Spinal Stabilization, Talis Biomedical.
Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) is reconsidering its approach to regulating devices that bear materials of animal, microbial or recombinant origin, a broad class of products that includes transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) devices.
Mediwhale Inc. and Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea, are developing a new predicting tool combining artificial intelligence (AI) and non-invasive retinal eye examination capable of accurately predicting chronic kidney diseases before symptoms appears.
Physicians and device manufacturers don’t always see things the same way, but there are large areas of overlap, such as the impact of prior authorization and the effects of certificates of need for radiology facilities. These two issues came up in a hearing of the House Small Business Committee, suggesting that legislation may be forthcoming that would tackle these and other issues that hamper both the practice of medicine and sales of medical devices.