Hologic Inc. received FDA premarket approval for its Aptima CMV Quant assay, which enables monitoring of viral loads of transplant patients with cytomegalovirus (CMV). While CMV typically poses little risk to adults with healthy immune systems, it can cause organ rejection and death in transplant patients if untreated. The assay gained a CE mark in June 2021.
A U.S. district court slapped down a controversial Department of Health and Human Services rule that threatened the future of biopharma companies’ patient assistance programs, which are intended to help patients cover their out-of-pocket costs for pricy drugs.
A year after the World Health Organization's (WHO) Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response called for reforms to make COVID-19 the last pandemic, the panel remains solidly frustrated in its lack of progress.
Regulatory snapshots, including global submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Icad, Olympus, Robocath.
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Alzamend, Ananda, Biontech, Cytokinetics, Gilead, Huyabio, Incannex, Janssen, Nouscom, Pfizer, Sorrento, Teva.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee has posted its version of U.S. FDA user fee legislation, a bill that echoes many of the primary features of the version already at play in the House of Representatives. One critical difference is that the Senate bill includes legislation that would enable the FDA to regulate lab-developed tests (LDTs), the so-called Verifying Accurate, Leading-edge IVCT Development (VALID) Act, the omission of which from the House bill ruffled a few feathers. The American Clinical Laboratory Association (ACLA) responded to the Senate bill with a May 17 statement applauding the inclusion of the VALID Act in the Senate user fee bill.
The European Commission (EC) has proposed new legislation directed toward formation of a European Health Data Space (EHDS), which is nominally intended to address some perceived gaps in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). While this legislative proposal seems to interact with both the GDPR and pending EU legislation on artificial intelligence, the EHDS takes on the massive challenge of compulsory interoperability of electronic health records (EHRs). The EC unveiled the proposal with an emphasis on health data accessibility, although both the European Council and the European Parliament will now have their say over how the legislation will ultimately read.
The pandemic exponentially amplified the move to more patient-driven health care with at-home monitoring, wearable medical devices and telemedicine. Testing has arguably seen the greatest shift, led by emergency use authorizations (EUA) for dozens of rapid tests for SARS-CoV-2. Laboratory Corp. of American Holdings Inc. (Labcorp) stands to benefit even more from the trend with an EUA for an over-the-counter multiplex respiratory virus test and the launch of an at-home collection kit for testing hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) this week.
While children younger than 5 in the U.S. still have no vaccine protection against COVID-19, those 5 and older may be able to get a third jab. The FDA authorized, May 17, the use of a single booster dose of the Pfizer Inc.-Biontech SE vaccine for kids 5 through 11 years of age who completed the primary two-dose series at least five months earlier.
Rather than drafting a new guidance, the U.S. FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research made some clarifying revisions to update its 16-year-old final guidance, “Investigating out-of-specification (OOS) test results for pharmaceutical production.”