Quality Systems

The International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities held a virtual meeting of regulators from around the world to discuss policy issues and regulatory requirements to respond to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The EU Executive Steering Group on Shortages of Medicines Caused by Major Events met on May 13, 2020 to discuss measures the European Union is taking to ensure the availability of medicines during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A contamination control strategy can prevent contamination in sterile product manufacturing. The right system, equipment, and personnel training are also essential to mitigate risk.

A temporary restraining order was entered against Xephyr LLC, doing business as N-Ergetics requiring the company to immediately stop distributing colloidal silver products.

Pharmaceutical Technology spoke with John Harmer, director, technical sales at Vanrx Pharmasystems about considerations in choosing the best system and equipment for contamination control in pharmaceutical manufacturing.

A variety of assays should be used to detect bacterial, fungal, and viral contaminants in the human source cells used for cell therapies.

The right approach to biological safety cabinets, and collaboration between engineers and those who will operate the equipment, is crucial to preventing cell-culture contamination.

Regulators have exaggerated expectations for simulated media fills.

Some observers fear that political interference in the process may erode confidence in the scientific basis for FDA regulatory decisions.

The agency is responding to companies promoting and selling medical products that claim, but are unproven, to prevent or treat COVID-19.

AbbVie and Allergan have satisfied all required antitrust clearances for the acquisition.

Tabrecta is approved to specifically target metastatic non-small cell lung cancer with a mutation that leads to MET exon 14 skipping (METex14).

EMA's Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use has recommended that all ranitidine medicines be suspended within the European Union as a result of the presence of low levels of NDMA.

Congressional leaders are developing the next version of the 21st Century Cures Act, including provisions to advance research related to the COVID-19 crisis as part of initiatives for bringing innovative therapies to market faster.

Policy makers seek to ensure supplies of new therapies and to limit shortages.

Having a better understanding about compliance will be of benefit when looking for a job or for furthering one’s career, says Siegfried Schmitt, PhD, vice-president, technical, Parexel Consulting.

Industry must never become complacent about the safety of drug products and should seek to continually perform surveillance even if the drug is well-established.

FDA’s EUA provides the first new treatment for COVID-19 patients with severe symptoms.

Discovery of carcinogenic nitrosamines in three of the world’s most widely prescribed drugs is driving efforts to better detect, control and prevent their generation in APIs and finished drug products.

A well-defined contamination control program is essential to maintain quality through aseptic manufacture of parenteral drug products.

The CuDAL-Excel program, based on Microsoft (MS) Excel, has been developed to calculate the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) passing probability of content uniformity and dissolution tests for both sampling plan 1 and sampling plan 2 scenarios and for both immediate release and extended release requirements. The users can obtain the passing probability by simply entering the input variables, with wide applications for process validation/verification and batch release. As a user-friendly program, CuDAL‑Excel should bring more benefits to the industry practitioners than other existing programs/tools.

The ASTM standard describes how to evaluate single-use systems for foreign particle analysis.

The company is recalling the product because of out-of-specification results for high molecular weight polymers.

The company is voluntarily recalling 13 lots of the product because of particulate matter found in reserve sample vials.

With hundreds of clinical trials for potential coronavirus therapies in the works concerns have mounted about the emergence of conflicting data, useless results, and wasted efforts from multiple overlapping efforts.