Since the initial April 2016 draft published, the pharmaceutical industry has been working to toward complying with the FDA guidance on Data Integrity and Compliance With Drug CGMP (here) which was finalized in December 2018. One passage in the introduction of the guidance has resonated with me: “Management’s involvement in and influence on these strategies […]
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 United States Food and Drug Administration and the Indian Government join forces in “Operation Broadsword”. No, it’s not a trailer for an action thriller, it’s a serious collaboration between two governmental entities to limit the import and sale of illicit drugs to consumers, detailed in FDA’s news release on February 18, 2020 (here). The […]
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 […]
January was a gangbuster month for the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) with regard to publication of gene therapy (GT) guidance documents! A total of six final guidelines and one draft guideline on GT products were issued. These included: Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Control Information for Human Gene Therapy Investigational New Drug […]
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 […]
The FDA’s Office of Pharmaceutical Quality (OPQ) is the group within the FDA that defines the quality requirements for all human drugs under its umbrella (filed as NDAs, ANDAs, BLAs, 351(k)/Biosimilars, and OTC products). The group issued its 2019 Annual Report just this month (read the full report here) that includes a look back […]
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 […]
Some time ago, we highlighted the issues that we had been facing searching FDA’s Warning Letter database in the new FDA website (FDA’s Website Re-Design – Did Something Get Left Behind?). We wanted to give you an update as to where the current status of this is. Since drafting this post, we received some email […]
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, […]
