The Rare Pediatric Disease Priority Review Voucher program has had a bit of a tumultuous history in its 12 short years of existence. Designed to incentivize the development of drugs for pediatric rare diseases where such development may not otherwise have occurred, vouchers may be …
If you monitor Regulations.gov dockets and litigation dockets on PACER like we do, then you know that one company name—more than any other over the past several years—pops up: Vanda Pharmaceuticals, Inc. But unlike the fictitious Vandelay Industries of Seinfeld that George Costanza claims to …
In the Hatch-Waxman Community there are certain folks who are viewed as “the Founders” or pioneers of the law. There are, of course, the names Representative Henry Waxman and Senator Orrin Hatch, but there were several other Founders. One of them—who was said to have …
FDA issued a Federal Register notice on September 13, 2024, seeking feedback on the Integrated Review format that the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) began using as part of its New Drugs Regulatory Program (NDRP) modernization effort several years ago. The NDRP focused on …
Forty years ago today—on a sunny Monday, September 24, 1984 at approximately 3:30 PM Eastern Time in the Rose Garden at the White House—President Ronald Reagan signed into law Public Law 98-417, the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984, stating that …
FDA’s Office of Prescription Drug Promotion (OPDP) has issued its fourth Untitled Letter of 2024 – this one to AbbVie, Inc. (AbbVie), for a direct-to-consumer (DTC) TV advertisement for its drug UBRELVY (ubrogepant) that features tennis star, social media influencer and entrepreneur Serena Williams. This …
FDA recently published a Federal Register (FR) Notice [Docket No. FDA-2024-N-3945] announcing the publication of a draft strategy document, for public comment, outlining specific actions FDA plans to take to facilitate the use of innovative manufacturing technologies. This FR Notice and draft strategy document are part …
“Inter Partes Review” and “Section 101” are not terms you typically run into on this all-things-FDA blog, but we have talked about such patent-related issues before (here and here), and they are important legal (patent) principles, particularly in the context of drug and biological products …
Last week, FDA revised one of its two guidances relating to nitrosamines, Control of Nitrosamine Impurities in Human Drugs. Nitrosamines are impurities that can form during drug manufacturing and are considered potentially potent carcinogens. One specific kind of nitrosamines called N-nitrosamine drug substance-related impurities, or …
Tell me doctor, where are we going this time? Is this the 90s, or 2025? Apologies to both Robert Zemeckis, who directed the 1985 classic “Back to the Future,” and to Huey Lewis and the News, which played “Back in Time” for the feature film, …
As readers of this blog know (see, e.g., here), the Affordable Generics (and Biosimilars) Act has been floating around in Congress for the better part of two decades. That bill, addressing drug (and later biological product) patent settlement agreements (pejoratively referred to as “reverse payment …
The American Conference Institute (“ACI”) will hold (virtually) its 4th Annual Passport to Proficiency on the Essentials of Hatch-Waxman and BPCIA from October 8-24, 2024. This virtual three-week program is designed to give new lawyers and executives a solid foundation in the essentials and intricacies of …
Enacted in 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) amended the Medicare provisions of the Social Security Act to impose several discount requirements on pharmaceutical manufacturers. In addition to the widely publicized drug price negotiation program, the IRA established inflation rebate programs under Medicare Part B …
FDA’s Office of Prescription Drug Promotion (OPDP) has issued two new Untitled Letters this summer after 5 months without any letter activity. The letters are vastly different from one another in subject matter, but together they make a cruel summer of OPDP enforcement against industry. …
Increasingly the subject of induced infringement litigation, the viability of the carve-out has been questioned for several years now. But recently, a new challenge was filed in the District Court for the District of Columbia questioning whether modifications to labeling as a result of patent …
