Although though we are in the grips of a pandemic and our attention is focused on the development of treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, manufacturing of drug products to treat other conditions is continuing, and GMPs must still be maintained. Sponsor companies continue to manufacture products and are still dependent upon products and services from […]
Today, the FDA published in a final rule (here) a significant revision to the regulatory definition of biological product that will have a major impact on what product will be regulated under the Public Health Service Act (PHSA), and which will be regulated solely under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA). Specifically, the […]
The use of contract manufacturers for the production of approved drug products has become more and more commonplace, particularly with the steady increase through the years of virtual pharmaceutical companies, a business model where the majority of the drug development and production work is outsourced to third parties as needed. While the use of a […]
The FDA Guidance for Industry, Investigating Out‑of-Specification (OOS) Test Results for Pharmaceutical Production, was published in October 2006 (here). The pharmaceutical industry has had about 14 years to learn how to comply to this guidance. A quick survey of recent Form 483s and Warning Letters would indicate that there is still much to be learned […]
In earlier blogs, we have written about specific technical items related to identity testing. However, a review of Warning Letters published on the US FDA website for the months of December 2019 and January 2020, revealed three Warning Letters citing instances of failures to perform identity testing of active pharmaceutical ingredients prior to the manufacturing […]
Three of FDA’s Centers (CDER, CBER, and CDRH) recently published a combined draft guidance for Industry entitled Bridging for Drug-Device and Biologic-Device Combination Products (here). This draft guidance provides the FDA’s current thinking on what manufacturers should consider when they wish to bridge the data from one such combination product to another combination product during […]
February 3, 2020 was the last day to comment on the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) notice in the Federal Register on the Novel Excipient Review Program Proposal; Request for Information and Comments (here), which we reported on in a previous blog post (here). In this notice, the FDA had proposed a pilot program related […]
Recently, FDA has posted (here) that Metformin, from several sources, tested by FDA showed that the levels of N-nitroso-dimethylamine (NDMA) in the drug are below the levels of detection (here). Great news! NDMA belongs to the nitrosamine family, and is one of the well-known animal carcinogens and a suspected human carcinogen. The nitrosamines, including NDMA, […]
Just look around, watch the television, read the newspaper, and what do you see? Seems like very few reasons to be thankful. School and workplace shootings, the political scene is as nasty as I ever remember in my 70 years on earth. Climate change is threatening the future of our children, and the environmental controls […]
So, what is the buzz about continuous manufacturing (CM)? What benefits does it bring to the manufacturer and what are the regulatory challenges? The author of this Contract Pharma article, José L. Toro, Ph.D. of Lachman Consultants, discusses the current thinking on the benefits of CM and the regulatory hurdles a manufacturer has to overcome. […]
