FDA announced last week that it is planning to create restrictions on using the word “milk” to describe non-dairy products such as almond milk, soy milk, etc. citing that consumers are “hurt” when non-dairy products are called “Milk”. It is hard to argue over the frivolity of this FDA initiative. Non-dairy products that look and … Read more
Recently the FDA Commissioner, who is a prolific Tweeter, started Sunday-special tweets called the “Sundaytweetorials” to discuss broad issues. Last Sunday’s “tweetorial” included a series of 22 tweets discussing issues related to clinical trial design. The tweets discussed common strategic considerations for clinical trial design and related issues. Although there were no new announcements or … Read more
This week FDA released a list of all surrogate endpoints used for approval of drugs and created a special meeting specifically to discuss creation of new surrogate endpoints. The list of surrogate endpoints includes more than 100 drug and biologic products approved by FDA over the last 10-15 years and cover practically all major indications. … Read more
Electronic health records (EHRs) provide a rich source of real-world health-related information which can be used as an electronic source data in clinical investigations. However, there are several conditions that one needs to meet before it would be acceptable to FDA. FDA has allowed use of electronic sources data (e-Source) for several years; the FDA … Read more
In a review of 46 drugs approved under the breakthrough therapy (BTD) program, it was found, not surprisingly, that most of the approvals were based on smaller, uncontrolled clinical trials, implying that the BTD programs leads to approval of unsafe drugs. However, this analysis ignores the core premise of this program, namely faster approval for … Read more
Serving on the FDA Advisory Committees is a considered a very prestigious accomplishment for most academic and professional experts who help FDA make tough decisions about new drugs. A survey of the post-Advisory Committee life of these experts found that for many, this also serves as an attractive credential for companies seeking to hire expert … Read more
About 40% of FDA’s senior leadership will be eligible to retire next year and about 15% of its overall workforce of 17,000 employees could also be eligible to retire. And that has FDA very worried about replenishing the talent. In an effort to hire more aggressively not only to prepare for the possible large-scale loss … Read more
FDA is responsible to monitor and warn consumers about food borne infections to prevent illnesses, but it could take weeks and even months between when FDA becomes aware of a contaminated food and when the recall process begins. And during that time unsuspecting consumers could keep buying the tainted food and get sick. In an … Read more
Last week, the Center for Biologics (CBER) announced a new kind of meeting with the FDA reviewers aimed at exploratory discussions prior to initiating significant development work. These meetings are expected to primarily provide an opportunity to discuss the preclinical studies and manufacturing issues related to first-in-human trials with new biological products. These meetings seem very … Read more
The informed consent for any clinical trial requires the sponsor to inform the potential participants about available treatment options outside the trial. For life-threatening indications, it would mean telling the patients that they could get the same investigational drug via the Right-to-Try law without participating in the trial, thereby eliminating the very reason these patients … Read more
