Clinical trials are run at clinics with patients, that’s how it has been for the last. So, the new FDA guidance on how to run trials at clinics may come as a surprise to many doing such trials for the last few decades. Doctors act as investigators and patients become subjects at the same location. … Read more
Clinical trials have become increasingly globalized over the last three decades with sponsors routinely conducting multinational clinical trials to evaluate new drugs. A new guidance document from the FDA seems to indicate that the FDA would like to buck that trend. The guidance document lists several previous requirements with a new tone that seems to … Read more
Remote or decentralized clinical trials can make the lives of all stakeholders simpler while yielding high-quality data. Most clinical trials these days involve hybrid systems where parts of the traditional clinical trial activities are conducted remotely. The sponsors must understand the FDA’s expectations from such trials. A new FDA Guidance Document released this week helps … Read more
Veterinarians are responsible for ensuring the safe use of prescription drugs for animals. Federal law requires that prescription animal drugs can only be prescribed or dispensed by a licensed veterinarian, not by veterinary technicians or other staff. This is because these prescription animal drugs may have harmful effects if used incorrectly or without proper guidance. … Read more
Many drugs are approved with a boxed warning (BW) on their labels assuming that the prescribers and patients would make informed decisions about using these drugs. But how effective are they in this purpose? An FDA study to evaluate BW in prescription practices yielded interesting but unsurprising findings. A BW highlights serious risks associated with … Read more
De Novo classification requests require a significant investment of time and resources. Many applicants are new to the FDA regulatory processes and need help in putting together a reasonable request. In the last few years, the FDA has tried to help medical device submitters with application formatting via its eSTAR templates. This month they expanded … Read more
Participating in clinical trials is expensive and may be financially untenable, especially for economically challenged participants. Sponsors often offer compensation to trial participants to alleviate this financial burden leading to an unintended negative consequence; the participants owe taxes on the payments received and might lose their eligibility for government financial assistance programs. A bill in … Read more
In 2017, the FDA created its Competent Generic Drugs (CGD) program to encourage the development of generic versions for off-patent drugs with no competition. This was in response to a widespread practice in the industry where a monopoly for a product allowed the manufacturer of such drugs to gouge the prices of their product with … Read more
India is the source of many traditional, alternative, and herbal medicines including Ayurveda, Unani, and Homoeopathy. Although these medicines are mostly sold in India, a significant amount is exported to the US; almost 25% of all traditional medicines exported from India are destined to the US. FDA is aware that while none of these medicines … Read more
The FDA made a public announcement this week asking consumers to not use anti-chocking devices, saying that they are not effective and that manual anti-choking procedures are much better. Anti-choking devices are popular, particularly with parents trying to be prepared for accidental choking of their children. However, the lack of FDA enforcement highlights the limits … Read more
