The opioid crisis in the U.S. has not yet been resolved, but FDA commissioner Robert Califf said April 19 the agency could do more to resolve the crisis if Congress granted the agency the authority to require that new opioid analgesics offer superior safety relative to currently approved products. Califf laid the blame for the crisis on manufacturers in stating that drug makers had “let us down” in failing to develop novel oral analgesics that avoid the addictive properties that helped to fuel the opioid crisis.
Regulatory snapshots, including global submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: GE Healthcare, Meridian Bioscience, Noctrix Health.
While the pandemic is nearing its end, Chinese officials are calling for the development of novel, multivalent COVID-19 vaccines as an essential task moving forward.
The U.S. Senate Finance Committee has its work cut out for it as it crafts bipartisan legislation “that will take on the worst practices by drug-pricing middlemen and ensure that the prescription drug supply chain is pulling in the same direction: more competition and lower costs for patients and taxpayers,” committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said.
While the pandemic is nearing its end, Chinese officials are calling for the development of novel, multivalent COVID-19 vaccines as an essential task moving forward. To date, China has 17 COVID-19 vaccine products that have completed or are in phase III trials, according to the NMPA.
The success of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) over the past 20 years is one of the biggest challenges in reaching its goal of eliminating HIV as a global public health threat by 2030, members of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee were told as they moved toward reauthorizing the program for another five years.
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Cel-Sci, CSL, Nascent, SAB, Taiho, Zucara.
The annual U.S. budget scrum is well underway in Washington, with drug pricing a persistent theme on Capitol Hill. Lawrence Tabak, acting director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), said NIH’s view is that federal government exercise of march-in rights “is not the instrument to regulate drug pricing” as it would alienate drug makers and their investors, but Tabak vowed that the appropriate use of march-in rights is the subject of intense focus at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Danco Laboratories LLC’s Mifeprex (mifepristone) and Genbiopro Inc.’s generic got another temporary reprieve April 19 from a court order that would tighten access to the abortion drug.
Australia’s Department of Health is seeking input from the public on the country’s health technology assessment process that informs decisions about what drugs or devices should be reimbursed and under what circumstances a therapy should be subsidized and at what cost to the taxpayer.
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