A group of drug reg­u­la­tors from Aus­tralia, Cana­da, Sin­ga­pore, Switzer­land and the UK on Tues­day un­veiled their strate­gic plans for the next three years, lay­ing out how they’ll work to­geth­er on re­view­ing new drugs to re­duce du­pli­ca­tion across bor­ders.

While un­der­stand­ing that the bio­phar­ma in­dus­try is tru­ly glob­al, the group, known col­lec­tive­ly as the Ac­cess Con­sor­tium, seeks to bet­ter align their re­spec­tive reg­u­la­to­ry and pol­i­cy ap­proach­es for phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, with an aim to fa­cil­i­tate faster ac­cess to high qual­i­ty, safe and ef­fec­tive health prod­ucts.

Through 2024 the con­sor­tium will seek to in­crease the num­ber and va­ri­ety of new drug ap­pli­ca­tions that the reg­u­la­tors col­lec­tive­ly as­sess, in ad­di­tion to cap­tur­ing lessons learned from the pan­dem­ic to im­prove their work-shar­ing process­es.

In ad­di­tion, the reg­u­la­tors will al­so ex­plore col­lab­o­ra­tions with na­tion­al health tech­nol­o­gy as­sess­ment or­ga­ni­za­tions, which can in­form re­im­burse­ment de­ci­sions.

The con­sor­tium al­so said, ac­cord­ing to its new strate­gic plan, that it’s con­sid­er­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive work on clin­i­cal tri­al de­signs and pro­vid­ing spon­sors with mu­tu­al av­enues for ad­vice.

The group said it will gauge its suc­cess based on in­creas­es in prod­ucts made avail­able, re­duced ef­fort and du­pli­ca­tion for in­dus­try and reg­u­la­tors, in­creased col­lab­o­ra­tion on man­u­fac­tur­ing and clin­i­cal in­spec­tions, and by de­creas­ing the av­er­age time to mar­ket for prod­ucts as­sessed un­der the group.

The orig­i­nal con­sor­tium formed in 2007 with all of the reg­u­la­tors ex­cept for the UK’s MHRA, which joined last Oc­to­ber.

MHRA is al­so now part of an­oth­er over­lap­ping group of reg­u­la­tors in­clud­ing the US FDA, Brazil’s AN­VISA, the Eu­ro­pean Med­i­cines Agency, Japan’s Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and Med­ical De­vices Agency, and all of the mem­bers of the Ac­cess Con­sor­tium. The reg­u­la­tors work to­geth­er on con­cur­rent sub­mis­sions and re­views of can­cer drugs as part of what’s known as Pro­ject Or­bis.

In April 2020, Seagen’s tu­ca­tinib in com­bi­na­tion with trastuzum­ab and capecitabine was the first new mol­e­c­u­lar en­ti­ty ap­proved un­der the FDA-led group of reg­u­la­tors.

The first batch of pivotal data on Autolus Therapeutics’ CAR-T is in, and execs are ready to plot a path to market.

With an overall remission rate of 70% at the interim analysis featuring 50 patients, the results set the stage for a BLA filing by the end of 2023, said CEO Christian Itin.

Perhaps more importantly — given that Autolus’ drug, obe-cel, is going after an indication that Gilead’s Tecartus is already approved for — the biotech highlighted “encouraging safety data” in the trial, with a low percentage of patients experiencing severe immune responses.

The FDA’s Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee will meet next Tuesday to discuss whether Cytokinetics’ potential heart drug can safely reduce the risk of cardiovascular death and heart failure in patients with symptomatic chronic heart failure with reduced ejection fraction.

The drug, known as omecamtiv mecarbil and in development for more than 15 years, has seen mixed results, with a first Phase III readout from November 2020 hitting the primary endpoint of reducing the odds of hospitalization or other urgent care for heart failure by 8%. But it also missed a key secondary endpoint analysts had pegged as key to breaking into the market.

The notorious drug testing company Valisure, which has made a name for itself by forcing FDA’s hand with some of its safety-related uncoverings, received a letter this week after the FDA uncovered violations at its Connecticut-based testing lab in 2021.

The letter, which was sent on Dec. 5, stated that the FDA is “concerned” that Valisure was not aware of  drug supply chain security requirements.

Republicans have taken a stand against the pandemic era habit of lax work-from-home schedules. Now that they’ve wrestled control of the House majority, the FDA’s leadership is playing ball, sending many of the agency’s more than 18,000 employees back to their desks early next year.

Whether this exodus back to White Oak in Silver Spring, MD (many staff will still be allowed to work from home for multiple days per week) will mean more defections to industry and elsewhere remains to be seen.

The generics manufacturer Lupin has been given another Form 483 from the FDA this year.

US regulators inspected Lupin’s pharmaceutical manufacturing site in the town of Mandideep, India from Nov. 14 through Nov. 23, with the 14-page report marking 16 observations.

The inspection report stated that the site did not have the appropriate controls over its computer systems to ensure that changes in “master production” or records are only done by authorized personnel, along with written procedures not being established to conduct annual reviews of records associated with drug batches.

The FDA is struggling to remove drugs from the marketplace that don’t show effectiveness in late stage trials, new JAMA analyses found, thanks to the persistent tension between speed and confidence in early clinical data.

Congress, regulated industry and patients have urged the FDA to shorten the amount of time that the market has to wait for drugs to become available that may help severe and prevalent diseases – and the FDA has listened, offering up a quick accelerated approval pathway that’s frequently used by new cancer drugs.