Tag Archives: FDA

01Sep/21

FDA Reports on The State of Pharmaceutical Quality

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Remote Evaluations, Grading Industry on a Curve and Using AI to Predict Site Inspection Scores

By: Axendia Staff

The FDA issued its latest report on the State of Pharmaceutical Quality.  In the report, the Agency describes Pharmaceutical Quality as the ability of the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry to deliver quality drug products to U.S. patients and consumers. In addition, FDA defines quality drug products as those that are safe and effective and free of contamination and defects.  It is worth noting the absence of the word “compliant” in these definitions.

Hidden among Hand Sanitizer recall data were a number of significant developments on FDA’s regulatory approach.

This Brief represents Axendia’s analysis and insights on FDA’s Report on the State of Pharmaceutical Quality.

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23Jul/20

3D Printing Body Parts: This 24th Century Technology is Only a Few Years Away!

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By: Jared N. Matlis, Research Assistant

Science fiction is humanity’s prediction of its own future, but is often the inspiration for it.  Star Trek is a prime example of this irony, from computer tablets to flip phones, this show inspired the technological advancements it had envisaged.  

While some of these creations, like starships and teleporters, are still out of our reach, others are closer than we expect. Especially in the field of medical devices.  

For instance, in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Ethics”, Lieutenant Worf is paralyzed from the waist down because of damage to his spinal cord. Despite the severity of his injury, Worf recovers due to Dr. Crusher’s implementation of a synthetic spinal cord which replaced his damaged one. Even in the 24th century, this is considered an experimental procedure, so it must be centuries ahead of us now, right? With 3D Printing, this level of medical device may only be a few years away. 

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02Dec/19

FDA Discusses Challenges and Opportunities for 3D Printing in Life Sciences

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A Straight from the Source Webinar 

The interest in 3D Printing (a/k/a Additive Manufacturing) has risen spectacularly the last decade.  The use of 3D Printing technology has wide-ranging applications across the Health Technology Ecosystem, including surgical, healthcare, pharmaceutical and medical devices.  In fact, over 100 medical devices using 3D printed components have been cleared by FDA. 

With the rise in utilization of 3D Printing in Medical Devices, FDA’s interest in additive manufacturing has significantly increased.  To address how the technology can affect the quality, safety and effectiveness of these products, FDA published guidance for industry titled: “Technical Considerations for Additive Manufacturing Devices” by Dr. Matthew Di Prima.

Join FDA’s Matthew Di Prima and Axendia’s Eric M. Luyer in for a live webinar on November 20th at 11am ET.  This webinar is now available on-demand.

Meet Your Trusted Sources 

Di-Prima-Luyer-Webinar-Twitter

In this webinar, we discuss FDA’s perspective on: 

  • Current capabilities of 3D Printing in Life Sciences 
  • Challenges and opportunities for 3D Printing in Life Sciences 
  • Case studies on FDA reviewed and approved devices on the market 
  • Collaborations Industry, Universities and Standard Development Organizations 
  • Regulations, guidance and Standards for 3D Printing  
  • Vision for future uses of 3D Printing in Healthcare  
  • Point of Care  
  • Personalized Medical Devices  

Register and watch this webinar on-demand.

register

10Oct/19

Reimagining Medicine – The Novartis and Microsoft Collaboration

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Developing New Drugs Has Become as Much an AI and Data Science Problem as it is a Biology and Chemistry Problem

By: Ellyn McMullin, Research Associate

Bringing a new medicine to market is a costly and time-consuming process.  Nine out of 10 drug possibilities fail somewhere along the way.  As a result, on average, it costs life sciences companies $2.6 billion to introduce a single new prescription drug.  Streamlining drug development is an urgent issue from uncovering new ways to treat age-old sicknesses, to developing new vaccines to prevent highly-contagious diseases from turning into global pandemics, the impact in terms of lives saved worldwide would be enormous if new medicines could be invented faster.

Novartis and Microsoft recently announced their collaboration to explore how to take advantage of advanced Microsoft AI technology combined with Novartis’ life sciences expertise to find new ways to address the challenges underlying every phase of drug development.  There have been amazing scientific advances in recent years based on the ability to analyze huge amounts of data in new ways.  Developing new drugs has become as much an AI and data science problem as it is a biology and chemistry problem.

The exponential increase in digital health information in recent years offers new opportunities to improve human health; however, making sense of all the data is a huge challenge.  The issue isn’t just an issue of overwhelming volume. Much of the information exists in the form of unstructured data, such as research lab notes and clinical trial results, which is typically stored in disconnected systems. This approach makes bringing all that data together extremely difficult.

The goal of the new collaboration is to utilize Microsoft AI solutions to analyze large amounts of information and discover new correlations and patterns critical to finding new medicines.  The Microsoft data scientists and Novartis research teams are targeting three specific areas:

  • personalized treatment for macular degeneration
  • manufacturing new gene and cell therapies more efficiently with an initial focus on acute lymphoblastic leukemia
  • a focus on using AI to shorten the time required to design new medicines

Vas Narasimhan, CEO of Novartis, said, “As Novartis continues evolving into a focused medicines company powered by advanced therapy platforms and data science, alliances like this will help us deliver on our purpose to reimagine medicine to improve and extend patients’ lives. Pairing our deep knowledge of human biology and medicine with Microsoft’s leading expertise in AI could transform the way we discover and develop medicines for the world.”

Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, added, “Our strategic alliance will combine Novartis’ life sciences expertise with the power of Azure and Microsoft AI. Together, we aim to address some of the biggest challenges facing the life sciences industry today and bring AI capabilities to every Novartis employee so they can unlock new insights as they work to discover new medicines and reduce patient costs.”

This strategic alliance is an important collaborative effort that promises to have a profound impact on how breakthrough medicines and treatments are developed and delivered.

Read the Microsoft Blog Post and The Novartis Press Release.

We also welcome you to read our eBook to discover How AI is Driving Predictive Quality.

24Sep/19

What to Expect in FDA’s Draft Guidance on Computer Software Assurance

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Recap of the Institute of Packaging Professionals (IoPP) – Puerto Rico Chapter Meeting

On August 22, 2019, I was invited by the IoPP – Puerto Rico Chapter to present key takeaways from FDA’s anticipated Draft Guidance on Computer Software Assurance for Manufacturing, Operations and Quality System Software.  Thirty-two attendees from fifteen companies attended the quarterly meeting at the C3Tec campus in Caguas, Puerto Rico.

Sandra IoPP PR 2Background:  Unfortunately, when the Medical Devices Current Good Manufacturing Practice (CGMP) Final Rule, Quality System Regulation, became effective on June 1, 1997, they had an “unintended consequence”:  Validating Computer Systems to death!

According to FDA’s Francisco (Cisco) Vicenty, Program Manager, Case for Quality, FDA CDRH, the Life-Science industry’s high focus on meeting regulatory requirements versus adopting best quality practices has the potential to increase risks to patients.  This compliance-centric approach has resulted in quality issues and has hampered innovation in manufacturing and product development practices.  Additionally, this single-mindedness has led to low rates of investment in automation and digital technologies.

To streamline and improve non-product computer system validation, industry launched a shared effort with FDA to identify causes of misperceptions, to clarify, and to promote the best practices.

Their analysis of the issue shows that:

  • The industry lags in implementation of automated systems and new technologies due to lack of clarity, outdated compliance approaches, and perceived regulatory burden.
  • Some companies struggle to understand the root cause of issues in order to improve product quality.

Their vision to achieve a new mind-set:

  • Drive a paradigm shift in applying value-driven and patient-focused approaches to streamline non-product software CSV.
  • Use critical thinking and risk-based, agile approaches to streamline assurance activities and evidence capture.

Their plan to meet their objectives:

  • Develop streamlined practice recommendations and pilots.
  • Modifications to the 820.70(i) and 820.50 regulatory language.
  • Guidance development centered on this software category.

Roque Redondo, VP Business Development at Mirus offered his perspective during the Q&A session by commenting, “It’s very important to understand if companies that provide software to our industry can demonstrate that they really have strong QA Systems in such a way that we can all rely on their software development programs.  I strongly recommend doing a survey of these companies to find out if they will be completely open to QA Audits from their clients to fully demonstrate that their QA Systems are in place and trustful.  In addition, it will be good to investigate if the excessive amount of CSV efforts done in the industry are due to the current guidelines or to the interpretation of the guidelines.”

It was a pleasure to share this information locally to my industry peers.

To hear the FDA’s perspective on the New Approach to Computer Software Assurance in our Straight from the Source webinar series, access it on-demand.