Regulatory Affairs

It is clear that the Office of Generic Drugs (OGD) wants to assure that first-time generic submissions also translate into first-time generic approvals. In FY 2013, OGD approved a total of 440 ANDAs. Of that total, there were 108 ANDAs reported on the OGD First-Time Generic Drug Approval lists for the year. So it appears that OGD’s goal of getting first time approvals to the American public as quickly as possible at least translates into the percentage of first-time generic approvals (e.g., 1 in 4 ANDA approvals in FY 2013 was for a first-time generic approval of the product or 25%).

nother page in the history of the generic drug program turns at the end of this month. Bob West, former Deputy Director of the Office of Generic Drugs (OGD) will retire at the end of this month after about 37 years of government service.

After checking the generic drug approvals on FDA’s website today, I was disappointed to see that OGD only approved 11 ANDAs in the month of November. Prior to this, the lowest month was July 2014 when OGD approved only 18 ANDAs. This comes after October’s encouraging numbers, with OGD issuing 45 ANDA approvals.

We are almost two months into FY 2015 and the first year of metrics for GDUFA, but have you noticed that the Generics Activity Report of the Generic Drug Program has not yet published for the October? As we understand it, the new OGD/CDER IT platform, noted by Dr. Woodcock as having some problems at the GPhA Fall Technical Workshop, is perhaps the culprit.

With all of the publicity (mostly negative) about the approval of the first (non-abuse-deterrent) hydrocodone bitartrate single entity extended-release (ER) product, Zohydro, by Zogenix, the race was on for the development of an abuse-deterrent formulation. On November 20, 2014, Purdue Pharma won that race with the approval of Hysingla (hydrocodone bitartrate) ER-Tablets with abuse-deterrent properties. Purdue obtained approval for 20 mg, 30 mg, 40 mg, 60 mg, 80 mg, 100mg, and 120 mg tablets.

After almost a year of protests from the industry, consumer groups, the public and GPhA, the FDA has decided to take a deeper dive into the many comments before finalizing (or hopefully abandoning) their proposed rule on permitting ANDA holders to revise or add label warnings.

The FDA has released its 2013 report to Congress regarding delays caused by 505(q) petitions. As most of you know, a 505(q) petition was created by Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act (FDAAA) of 2007 to require certain response times to petitions submitted to the FDA that would potentially delay the approval of a 505(j) or a 505(b)(2) application. Congress took this action because FDA response times to Citizen Petitions sometimes took years and industry complained that these delays in response caused delays in approvals for ANDA and (b)(2) applications.
FDA has done very well since the FDAAA in meeting the timeframes for response.