By Douglas B. Farquhar – Drug compounders who are thinking about registering with FDA to become “outsourcing facilities” – and those 40 + that already have – will be interested in the details of FDA’s recent recognition that all of the rigid requirements for “current Good …
By John A. Gilbert, Jr. & Larry K. Houck – As expected, the Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”) published its final rule in the Federal Register today (79 Fed. Reg. 37,623 (July 2, 2014) placing tramadol (2-[(dimethylamino)methyl]-1-(3-methoxyphenyl)cyclohexanol) into schedule IV of the federal Controlled Substances Act (“CSA”). …
By Kurt R. Karst – Ever since the FDC Act was amended in November 1997 by the the FDA Modernization Act (“FDAMA”) to add a new section creating a period of “pediatric exclusivity,” we’ve had more than a passing interest in the provision. In fact, it …
By Kurt R. Karst – It’s been quite a while since we last posted on the so-called “RLD (Reference Listed Drug) Theory of Liability.” It’s the theory put forward by plaintiffs’ attorneys in a lot of failure-to-warn generic drug product liability cases which posits that FDA’s …
By Kurt R. Karst – FDA’s recent posting of two Warning Letters (here and here) to companies that failed to pay Generic Drug User Fee Amendment (“GDUFA”) facility user fees for Fiscal Year 2014 (“FY14”) – for a grand total of three GDUFA Warning Letters thus …
By Jamie K. Wolszon – In the past two months we have seen two newsworthy items in the Laboratory-Developed Test (“LDT”) world. In June, the Defense Health Agency (“DHA”) announced that TRICARE, the U.S. health care program serving Uniformed Service members, retirees and their families, has …
By Alan M. Kirschenbaum – Today the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Health and Human Services issued a “Special Fraud Alert on Laboratory Payments to Referring Physicians.” Despite the focus of the Special Fraud Alert on activities of laboratories, drug and …
By James C. Shehan & Karla L. Palmer – In a curious posting on Friday, June 20, 2014, FDA with little fanfare set forth its latest position on medical marijuana. Amounting to little more than a statement of general support of scientific research on medical marijuana …
By Kurt R. Karst – Although we’re not patent attorneys, we’re smart enough to know that the September 16, 2011 enactment of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (“AIA”) signaled a sea change in the patent world. Indeed, the effects of the AIA were immediately felt in …
By Ricardo Carvajal – As widely reported in the press, several food industry trade associations sued the state of Vermont to overturn its recently enacted law requiring that a food “entirely or partially produced with genetic engineering” be labeled with the “clear and conspicuous words ‘produced …
By Kurt R. Karst – The so-called “drug lag” – i.e., the difference (or perceived difference some might say) in drug availability between the United States and other countries – was one of myriad reasons some folks back in the early 1990s thought it was necessary …
By Jennifer D. Newberger – Recognizing that even regulating certain software products as Class I medical devices is more regulation than necessary, FDA released a Draft Guidance document titled, “Medical Device Data Systems [MDDS], Medical Image Storage Devices, and Medical Image Communication Devices.” This Draft Guidance …
By Larry K. Houck – Deputy Assistant Administrator Joseph Rannazzisi, Office of Diversion Control, Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”), told the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations on April 29, 2014 that his agency “has steadily increased the frequency of compliance inspections” …
By Kurt R. Karst – Interest in and efforts to address shortfalls in the inclusion of women in clinical trials and clinical research, and differences in the sexes in drug development are not new. There’s the National Institutes of Health (“NIH”) Revitalization Act of 1993, which …
By Kurt R. Karst – After years of relative quiet, the Orange Book list of exclusivity terms has gotten quite a workout over the past year with the addition of several new terms to account for new non-patent marketing exclusivities. First there was the addition of …
