As part of its obligations under the 21st Century Cures Act, the U.S. FDA is proposing two new rules to harmonize sections of its regulations on human subject protection and institutional review boards with the revised Common Rule, which provides for the protection of human subjects in federally funded research.
While it continues to deny all kickback allegations raised in a whistleblower suit filed seven years ago, Biogen Inc. agreed Sept. 26 to pay $900 million to resolve claims that it paid doctors in the U.S. to prescribe its multiple sclerosis drugs from 2009 through March 2014.
In recent years, ethicists have executed a 180-degree shift on including children in clinical trials testing drugs, biologics and medical devices, moving from the idea that it was unethical to include youngsters in trials to an understanding that such inclusion may be the best way of protecting them.
Although it wasn’t a shutout, Spectrum Pharmaceuticals Inc. didn’t get the support it needed from a U.S. FDA advisory committee Sept. 22 for its non-small-cell lung cancer candidate, poziotinib, which it has proposed marketing as Pozenveo.
The fate of three cancer drugs, and possibly the future financial health of their sponsors, could be on the line Sept. 22 and 23 as the U.S. FDA’s Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) takes a hard look at the safety-efficacy data for Spectrum Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s Pozenveo, Oncopeptides AB’s Pepaxto and Secura Bio Inc.’s Copiktra. First up in the triple-header is Pozenveo (poziotinib), which is seeking accelerated approval as a second-line treatment for patients with locally advanced or metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer harboring HER2 exon 20 insertion mutations confirmed by an FDA-approved test.
Claiming it would be impossible to carve out a so-called skinny label that would comply with generic drug “same labeling” rules, Novartis AG is petitioning the U.S. FDA, for the second time, not to approve generic versions of its blockbuster heart drug, Entresto (sacubitril + valsartan), that attempt to carve around a cardiovascular indication that has exclusivity until Feb. 16, 2024.
In an effort to get drug regulators in the various EU member states on the same page, the EMA issued a Sept. 19 statement confirming that all biosimilars approved in the EU are interchangeable with other approved biosimilars referencing the same biologic, as well as the reference biologic itself.
With the science on aging advancing, it’s time for the U.S. to modernize its regulatory approval path for new longevity treatments, members of a House Science, Space and Technology subcommittee were told Sept. 15.
From the beginning of the monkeypox outbreak in the U.S. in May, the federal government has bungled the response, according to both Democratic and Republican members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.
Pricing new drugs for the U.S. market, especially those treating rare diseases, is getting a lot more complex now that the Medicare inflation rebate is in play. The rebate provision in the newly enacted Inflation Reduction Act incentivizes companies to set higher launch prices for drugs that will be used by Medicare beneficiaries since their future price increases will be limited to the rate of inflation. Although some of the other drug pricing measures included in the new law won’t kick in for a few years, the Medicare inflation rebate is to become effective next year.
