North America

With the deadline for comments on the US FDA’s draft guidance less than a month away, the Pink Sheet offers an infographic outlining what the agency is expecting in diversity action plans and when that might be implemented.

Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee will consider whether open-label extension data from a randomized trial that failed its primary endpoint, along with a historical control comparison, are enough to support approval in the ultra-rare disease.

Recent ODAC meetings suggest the FDA will expand focus beyond applications with pending approval decisions to refining trial designs and drug labels for competitors.

A new research ethics review system for multi-site clinical trials in Canada is expected to help improve study start-up times, avoid unnecessary duplication and boost the country’s competitiveness on a global stage.

In this third article of a series on new drug reimbursement recommendations by the HTA body NICE, the Pink Sheet finds that fewer innovative medicines are reimbursed in England than in eight other European nations.

The rolling reimbursement reviews that Canada’s Drug Agency introduced as a pilot scheme to speed up patient access to COVID-19 products can now be used for any drug application. The move to open up the mechanism follows prompts by industry.

England’s NICE has “misclassified” HER2-low metastatic breast cancer as a medium severity disease, say AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo, the co-developers of Enhertu. NICE said it would consider a rapid re-appraisal if the companies offered a “fair price” for the drug.