It’s back to the drawing board for the U.S. CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). After a year of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy gutting the panel and restocking it mostly with people who share his views on vaccines, the CDC published a notice in the May 19 Federal Register saying it’s withdrawing the amended ACIP charter renewal issued April 6 and is instead “re-establishing” the committee.
Following a discussion that focused more on a new personalized trial strategy rather than the proposed therapy, the U.S. FDA’s Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) voted 3-6 April 30 that Astrazeneca plc’s camizestrant demonstrated a clinically meaningful benefit in treating patients with HR+/HER2- metastatic breast cancer.
After a hiatus of more than nine months, the U.S. FDA’s Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) will meet April 30 to discuss two Astrazeneca plc applications – an NDA for camizestrant used in combination with a CDK4/6 inhibitor to treat HR+HER2- locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer and an sNDA for Truqap (capivasertib) to treat metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer that’s phosphatase and tensin homolog deficient.
With all the focus of late on the U.S. CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the FDA’s 30-plus advisory committees have been flying under the radar, especially since many of them haven’t met for a few years now.
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.
The second day’s meeting of the U.S. CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) took up guidelines related to COVID-19 vaccines, of which an outspoken skeptic is Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy – who in June fired all 17 members of ACIP and replaced them with names more to his liking.
The second day’s meeting of the U.S. CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) took up guidelines related to COVID-19 vaccines, of which an outspoken skeptic is Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy – who in June fired all 17 members of ACIP and replaced them with names more to his liking.
Despite some expectations that the U.S. CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) would dramatically change the childhood vaccine schedule for hepatitis B, the committee is poised to vote Sept. 19 on a much smaller change that would move the current birth dose to 1 month for infants born to mothers who test negative for hepatitis B.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and a few other medical professional groups were no-shows at the Sept. 18 meeting of the U.S. CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices. The absence of the liaison groups was noted, especially that of the AAP. In opening the two-day meeting, ACIP Chair Martin Kulldorff said he lamented that the AAP has ended its association with the committee.
Recent comments from CDER Director George Tidmarsh suggesting that the agency may be backing away from the use of its independent expert panels for individual product approvals seem to be supported by the numbers.
