Stryker Corp. is scrambling to recover from a cyberattack that’s disrupting its global network and being claimed by pro-Iranian hackers. “At this time, there is no indication of malware or ransomware, and we believe the situation is contained to our internal Microsoft environment only,” the Kalamazoo, Mich.-based med-tech company said March 12.
In releasing its latest revision of a draft guidance on biosimilars and interchangeable biosimilars, the U.S. FDA took another step in streamlining the development of the follow-ons by easing unnecessary clinical pharmacokinetic testing involving comparator biologics approved outside the U.S.
Patrick Cassells, of Fulshear, Texas, was sentenced March 6 to more than seven years in prison and ordered to pay more than $25 million in restitution and forfeiture after he pleaded guilty nearly two years ago to one count of health care fraud that involved the three durable medical equipment companies he owned and operated.
The regulatory clouds that have been darkening the U.S. FDA landscape of late for Uniqure NV’s gene therapy AMT-130 in Huntington’s disease may be parting a bit with the announced departure of Vinay Prasad as director of the agency’s CBER at the end of April.
At the current pace of innovation in the U.S. rare disease space, developing and approving therapies for just half of the 10,000-plus known rare diseases would take more than 160 years, Bradley Campbell, president and CEO of Amicus Therapeutics Inc., recently told the Senate Committee on Aging.
A lot of distance lies between talking regulatory flexibility and actually being flexible. That message was driven home again after Uniqure NV disclosed in its latest earnings report March 2 that the U.S. FDA wants a sham-controlled study before it will consider approval of the company’s gene therapy AMT-130 in Huntington’s, a rare disease currently affecting about 41,000 people in the U.S.
The U.S. CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has two new members, bringing its total membership to 15. As he has done since dismissing the entire ACIP panel last June, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy named the new members, Angelina Farella and Sean Downing, barely two weeks before the next ACIP meeting, March 18-19.
The U.S. FDA’s expectations that its new default position of basing marketing authorization of novel drugs on one adequate, well-controlled trial may be overstated. In explaining the policy in a recent article in TheNew England Journal of Medicine, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and CBER Director Vinay Prasad said they expect the initiative will create a “surge in drug development,” substantially reduce development costs and will speed drugs to market. While the initiative could reduce the time to the U.S. market, those expectations don’t take into consideration global norms and payer expectations.
Eli Lilly and Co. got a breather when the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that the company doesn’t owe Research Corporation Technologies Inc. (RCT) royalties on its diabetes drugs under a licensing agreement Lilly had made with Phillips Petroleum Co. in 1990 and that Phillips later sold to RCT.
