There are a number of dilemmas looming over generic drug firms in 2014 – some with no easy answers, but hopefully firms are considering their choices sooner rather than later. Two of these issues relate to the all-important question “Exactly when should the ANDA be submitted?”. Any generic drug firm knows that that answer is never easy and is dependent on many factors, such as biostudy success, completion of stability testing, facilities being ready for inspection and first-to-file opportunities, just to name a few. And of course, such practical scientific or regulatory deadlines are further complicated by the directed business goal of “the sooner the better”.

In trying to read the tea leaves at the Office of Generic Drugs (OGD) and discussing issues that really worry both OGD and industry, I have come across two issues that you need to stay on top of, one during the approval process and the other just after ANDA approval, to avoid a potential delay in approval that you did not see coming or a potential change in the way OGD does business relative to ANDAs subject to the valuable 180-day exclusivity provisions of the Act.

Yesterday, the Generic Pharmaceutical Association (GPhA) provided 24 pages of comments in response to the FDA’s Proposed Rule to permit generic applicants to unilaterally add or modify warnings in its label prior to FDA approval and prior to the revision of the reference listed drug’s (RLD) labeling.

For those of you that may have missed the January 2014 revision of the ANDA Checklist (last revised was 3rd quarter, October 2013), there are some new items that FDA will be looking for in its initial Completeness and Acceptability Review of ANDAs. Failure to include this information could result in a Refuse-to-Receive letter and a penalty of 25% of your ANDA user fee.

The Office of Generic Drugs (OGD) updated its Paragraph IV Database (PIVDB) yesterday and two new entries caught my eye. An ANDA for glycerol phenylbutyrate oral solution (a copy of the NDA for Ravicti held by Hyperion Therapeutics) was listed as submitted on November 19, 2013 and posted on 3/10/14 or about 4 months after the original submission. In this case, it is not the length of time the ANDA has been at OGD, but rather the exclusivity and patent issues associated with the product and the jump on first-to-file status that at least one generic firm has decided to seek, especially since the original NDA was approved on February 1, 2013, only 9 months prior to ANDA submission. The second listing that got my blood flowing was for Memantine Hydrochloride extended-release capsules, a generic form of Namenda XR Capsules. There was an approximate 10-month period from submission to acceptance of the ANDA. While that is not the longest review time for completeness and acceptability we have seen, it certainly indicates that either OGD had a difficult time evaluating the ANDA for receipt (maybe bioequivalence issues?) or their backlog could be a factor.