One down, eight to go. That’s the scorecard for the constitutional challenges to mandatory Medicare drug price negotiations now that a U.S. federal court has dismissed a suit filed by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the National Infusion Center Association and the Global Colon Cancer Association.
The European Commission approved two therapies for progressive, genetic diseases: Biogen Inc.’s Friedreich’s ataxia drug, Skyclarys (omaveloxolone), and Crispr Therapeutics AG’s CRISPR/Cas9 gene therapy for sickle cell disease and transfusion-dependent beta-thalassemia, Casgevy (exagamglogene autotemcel, exa-cel).
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has released a draft version of patent examiner guidelines to address the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the inventive process, reflecting the standing U.S. position that AI cannot be an inventor.
Less than a month after the U.S. FDA approved Sanofi SA and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s bestseller Dupixent (dupilumab) for treating eosinophilic esophagitis in children ages 1 to 11, the agency has approved Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd.’s Eohilia (budesonide oral suspension) for the same indication but for an older group.
Weaving in a loose regulatory end from March 2020 when it deemed nearly 100 NDAs as BLAs, the U.S. FDA released a final rule codifying its current approach to the use of drug master files for those products and their potential biosimilar competition.
The U.S. FDA has released a draft guidance for the use of data monitoring committees (DMCs) for clinical trials for devices and drugs, which would overwrite a similar guidance from 2006. This new draft guidance explicitly states that clinical studies more commonly employ DMCs than was the case 18 years ago and would seem to suggest that the agency will more routinely require the use of DMCs than was common practice in the past.
The Feb. 8 U.S. drug pricing hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee started out as a spectacle in which Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) rehashed his usual talking points as he lectured the CEOs of Bristol Myers Squibb Co., Johnson & Johnson and Merck & Co. Inc. about how their companies charge so much more for their drugs in the U.S. than in other countries. But despite the show-trial aspects of the hearing, or what Ranking Member Bill Cassidy (R-La.) called Sanders’ ongoing “CEO-whack-a-mole” agenda, some facts came through that could lead to pricing reforms if Congress has the bipartisan will to do so.
Shadowed by prescription drug shortages at their highest level since 2014, the FDA issued a slightly revised version Feb. 6 of a draft guidance it released a year ago to give it more visibility into the U.S. drug supply chain.
In a first, the U.S. FDA accepted an artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning-model into its Innovative Science and Technology Approaches for New Drugs (ISTAND) pilot program for drug development. The program will support use of Deliberate AI Inc.’s anxiety and depression assessment tool, called the AI-generated Clinical Outcome Assessment, as a qualified drug development tool.
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