Regulatory
An FDA committee’s September 2024 vote to limit the use of Merck’s Keytruda and BMS’ Opdivo in stomach and esophageal cancers based on PD-L1 expression levels reflects an emerging trend that leverages ever-maturing datasets.
Concurrently, a preprint from the industry-backed Vital Transformation found a 50% drop in company investments into small-molecule drug development.
MaaT013 in 2022 was put under clinical hold by the FDA, which cited safety and efficacy concerns with the sample-pooling method used to produce the investigational therapy. The hold was lifted in April 2023.
Vanda called the attention of FDA Commissioner Robert Califf to what it termed the “sentiment that the agency avoids public scrutiny of its decisions.”
The FDA recommended maintaining a minimum of 5% weight-loss for drug developers seeking to establish the efficacy of their investigational obesity candidates.
A post-marketing review by the FDA detected an increased risk of the autoimmune condition in patients inoculated with GSK’s Arexvy and Pfizer’s Abrysvo, prompting the regulator to require adjustments to the vaccines’ labels.
Amid recent backlash stemming from market withdrawals and trial delays, the FDA seeks to further clarify its requirements for confirmatory trials for therapies seeking the shortened path to market.
The FDA’s guidance on AI in drug development points to potentially life-threatening consequences of the technology, highlighting the importance of providing the regulator with detailed information regarding models’ development and maintenance.
In its Citizen Petition to the FDA, Novo Nordisk argued that there is no clinical need to allow compounding for liraglutide, the type 2 diabetes injection it sells as Victoza.
Among the FDA’s pending decisions for this quarter are Vertex’s non-opioid pain drug and Sanofi’s RNA interference therapy for hemophilia A and B.
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