This Monday Chipotle closed all its stores for 4 hours during peak lunch time to hold a “Virtual” town hall meeting with its employees to “discuss” steps it has taken to improve food safety. Repeated incidences of microbial contamination of food sold at Chipotle outlets lead to more than 500 cases of food borne illnesses last year, leading to … Read more
In the year 2015, FDA approved the largest number of new drugs and biologics ever; 45 new drugs and biologics were approved. One third or 36% of these new products were first in class drugs meaning that they had novel mechanisms of action and were chemically and biologically different from any drugs approved in the … Read more
India and China have similar number of FDA-registered GMP manufacturing sites, 662 and 694, respectively. India and China manufacture similar kind of regulated products, primarily API and finished drug products, and very few biologics and medical devices. The two countries are culturally and economically quite similar as well. However, manufacturing sites in China have received … Read more
Clinical trial transparency has been a contentious issue between sponsors of trials wanting to protect their assets, and the other stakeholders, such as trial participants, demanding increased rapid disclosure. Per the clinical trial disclosure laws written in 2007, all clinical trials must be registered and their data published on clinicaltrials.gov. However, the quality of data published on clinicaltrials.gov … Read more
This week Presidential contender Senator Bernie Sanders announced that he would block Dr. Robert Califf’s nomination to lead FDA due to his “lack of commitment to lowering drug prices”. Doing this he joins Senator Markey who opposed Califf for approving opiates, and Senator Murkowski who is opposed due to labeling of genetically modified salmon. However, Mr. Sander’s … Read more
Since, 2007, it has been mandatory to register most clinical trials on the government clinical trial registry, clinicaltrials.gov. According to the same law, results of clinical trials must be posted within 12 months of the completion date. Failing to do either could lead to penalties of $10,000 per day till the violation is corrected. A survey of … Read more
Time and again it has been debated if the public funding into academic research is justified in terms of the “return on investment”, namely, does academia generates enough products for general use compared to the R&D labs in industry. In a recent opinion piece in Wall St Journal, it was suggested that scientific innovation is not … Read more
Clinical monitoring is the most expensive component of a clinical trial. More than half of the total budget of a given clinical trial is allocated for monitoring costs. Monitoring is essential for source data verification (SDV). Additionally, up to 80% of the time spent to manage a trial goes into the logistics and execution of … Read more
Patient recruitment challenges plague all clinical trials. Sponsors of clinical trials need to plan robust recruitment campaigns and involve creative solutions to find patients willing to participate in their trials. However, little systematic analysis has been conducted so far to evaluate the impact of poor recruitment on trial failure. That is till now. In a report published … Read more
Under PDUFA V, FDA committed to obtain patient perspectives on at least 20 disease areas and their treatment options by the year 2017. The purpose was to include patient perspectives on their conditions, its impact on daily life, and available therapies for better patient-focused and patient-centric clinical trials. FDA committed to hold public meetings to … Read more
