As the cost of conducting clinical trials helps drive drug prices beyond the wallet of many U.S. patients, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is looking for ways to streamline those trials.
While having, in effect, only one controlled trial to support approval of Novartis AG's TOBI Podhaler (TIP) raised flags for FDA reviewers, it didn't faze the agency's Anti-Infective Drugs Advisory Committee.
With science boldly taking us where we’ve never gone before, we’re exploring new worlds and stretching the boundaries of our universe. While these are exciting times for the adventurer in us, they can be discomfiting for our inner ethicist. From cloning to stem cell research to genetic testing to patent eligibility to drug pricing to compassionate use to quality-of-life issues, we face a growing number of decisions fraught with moral and ethical questions that cannot be easily answered in a lab or by a textbook. What once were merely philosophical debates about the future promise of science have become gut-wrenching...
Novartis AG hopes to show an FDA advisory committee that it can teach a new trick to an old dog to make management of Pseudomonas aeruginosa easier for cystic fibrosis (CF) patients.
As the House and Senate limp toward their lame duck session with a slate full of tax cut, budget and sequestration issues, it's likely that a number of drug-related bills still sitting in committee will die with the 112th Congress.
The SEC voted 4-1 Wednesday to approve a proposed rule that pretty much echoes the congressional mandate in the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act to end the ban on general solicitation and advertising under Rule 506 of Regulation D.
While the FDA Safety and Innovation Act (FDASIA) includes a number of provisions to ensure the quality of drugs and protect against counterfeits, it's what it's missing that could have the biggest impact on the supply chain in a few years.
Calling it "one of the most significant unresolved legal questions currently affecting the pharmaceutical industry," Merck & Co. Inc. hit the pay-for-delay ball into the Supreme Court, asking the court to, once and for all, determine whether the reverse settlements violate federal antitrust laws.
Researchers who have acclimated to a publish-or-perish environment are in for a climate change when the first-to-file provision of the America Invents Act (AIA) settles over the land next March. At the front of that change is the Patent and Trademark Office's (PTO) proposed rule to expand the reach of prior art. If the rule is finalized, researchers who publish too soon before a patent application is filed could see the claims perish.
An appeals court Friday upheld federal funding of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research and, in a case involving cigarette labeling, gave a boost to corporate free speech rights that could encourage biopharma to challenge restrictions on off-label promotion.