In a drug safety communication on September 23, 2020 titled FDA requiring Boxed Warning updated to improve safe use of benzodiazepine drug class (here), the FDA announced changes being made to the boxed warning on all benzodiazepine products. The communication describes the need for the change as follows: “[T]o address the serious risks of abuse, […]
The history of the issue of the ”intended use” regulations goes back to 2015, as explained in this 39-page pre-publication version of the Federal Register Notice (here), and it is quite an interesting read. The main issue surrounds the notion that, if a firm knows its product is being used for a use not in […]
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is taking final official action withdrawing the approval of two new drug applications for BELVIQ (lorcaserin hydrochloride (HCl)) tablets and BELVIQ XR (lorcaserin HCl) extended-release tablets which were originally approved by FDA on June 27, 2012 and July 15, 2016, respectively. This announcement was made on the Federal Register’s […]
The FDA has been more than busy in its efforts to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Here is an update as of September 11, 2020 regarding some of the statistics the FDA has presented. The FDA has: Authorized 247 tests under emergency use authorizations (EUAs), of these: 197 are molecular tests 46 are antibody tests 4 […]
In an opinion piece in USA Today (here), eight career executives at the FDA, Patrizia Cavazzoni, Acting Director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Peter Marks, Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, Susan Mayne, Director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Judy McMeekin, Associate Commissioner for Regulatory […]
According to the unofficial August numbers derived from the FDA’s All Approvals list (here), the Office of Generic Drugs issued 58 full approval (AP) actions and 10 tentative approval (TA) actions during the month of August 2020. The number of APs and TAs are both the lowest number of approval actions in the past 7 […]
The Office of Generic Drugs released nineteen new and ten revised bioequivalence recommendations today. The Federal Register Notice (here) lists two tables with the new and revised recommendations as presented below: There are always concerns, when an existing guidance is revised, as to how it might impact […]
With six (6) reporting days left in the month, the FDA’s All Approvals List (here) has identified 43 full ANDA approval actions and 10 tentative approval actions. While this represents a bit slower pace for approval actions, there is still time to meet FY 2020 monthly averages by the end of the month. We want […]
In any analytical laboratory that performs cGMP testing, data review is required. However, to an analytical chemist that prefers benchwork, reviewing the data of a fellow analyst is often deemed an undesirable chore. The data reviewer rarely gets a “Thank you” for pointing out irregularities in documentation. The role of the data reviewer is to […]
With ANDA approval, one would expect that market entry would soon follow application approval, right? Wrong! The data suggests that only about 40% of generic drugs approved in any year are actually launched in that year and, after 5 years, there are still about 30% of those products that have still not launched. While this […]
