The Eu­ro­pean Med­i­cines Agency sought to re­mind in­dus­try to­day that use of the new Clin­i­cal Tri­als In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem (CTIS) will be manda­to­ry for all new ap­pli­ca­tions as of Tues­day, Jan. 31.

Fol­low­ing a one-year, op­tion­al tran­si­tion pe­ri­od where spon­sors could still sub­mit un­der the Clin­i­cal Tri­als Di­rec­tive, the CTIS will soon serve as the sin­gle en­try point for sub­mis­sions and for reg­u­la­to­ry as­sess­ments, and all fil­ings will have to come un­der the Clin­i­cal Tri­als Reg­u­la­tion, EMA said.

The long road to CTIS has been pocked with set­backs, de­lays, ques­tion marks and IT is­sues.

“Some users have ex­pe­ri­enced prob­lems with the sys­tem,” the reg­u­la­tor ac­knowl­edged. “EMA is work­ing close­ly with Mem­ber States, the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion, and stake­hold­ers to im­prove the CTIS user ex­pe­ri­ence for core CTIS process­es by the time the use of the sys­tem be­comes manda­to­ry for all new ap­pli­ca­tions.”

As of last May, with da­ta on three months since the launch of the CTIS tran­si­tion pe­ri­od, just 56 clin­i­cal tri­al ap­pli­ca­tions had been sub­mit­ted, EMA said at the time. By com­par­i­son, about 4,000 new tri­als are au­tho­rized each year across Eu­rope.

But all signs still point to Jan. 31 as go time for manda­to­ry use of the sys­tem.

EMA told its board yes­ter­day that since the last board meet­ing in De­cem­ber, “sig­nif­i­cant progress has been made and now more than 80% of the block­ing is­sues and re­lat­ed workarounds have been re­solved, with ac­tiv­i­ties re­main­ing on track to de­liv­er a sys­tem with no block­ing bugs on core func­tion­al­i­ties by 31 Jan­u­ary 2023.”

By Jan. 31, 2025, any on­go­ing tri­als ap­proved un­der the Clin­i­cal Tri­als Di­rec­tive will fall un­der the new­er reg­u­la­tion, and in­for­ma­tion about them will need to be trans­ferred to the CTIS, the EMA said.

Boehringer Ingelheim uncorked some positive results suggesting that Spevigo can help prevent flare-ups in patients with a severe form of psoriasis, months after the drug was approved to treat existing flares.

Spevigo, an IL-36R antibody also known as spesolimab, met its primary and a key secondary endpoint in the Phase IIb EFFISAYIL 2 trial in patients with generalized pustular psoriasis (GPP), Boehringer announced on Monday. While the company is keeping the hard numbers under wraps until later this year, it said in a news release that it anticipates sharing the results with regulators.

AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi won an appeals court win on Monday, as the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit found that the companies cannot be forced to provide 340B-discounted drugs purchased by hospitals from an unlimited number of community and specialty pharmacies.

“Legal duties do not spring from silence,” the decision says as the court makes clear that the federal government’s interpretation of the “supposed requirement” that the 340B program compels drugmakers to supply their discounted drugs to an unlimited number of contract pharmacies is not correct, noting:

A US appeals court has ruled against Johnson & Johnson’s use of bankruptcy to deal with mounting talc lawsuits, deciding that doing so would “create a legal blind spot.”

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a previous bankruptcy court decision on Monday, calling for the dismissal of a Chapter 11 filing by J&J’s subsidiary LTL Management.

Faced with more than 38,000 lawsuits alleging its talc-based products caused cancer, J&J spun its talc liabilities into a separate company called LTL Management back in October 2021 and filed for bankruptcy, a controversial move colloquially referred to as a “Texas two-step” bankruptcy. Claimants argued that the strategy is a misuse of the US bankruptcy code — and on Monday, a panel of judges agreed.

New York City is investing $20 million in biotech this year in the form of a 50,000-square-foot “innovation space” at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, complete with offices, research laboratories and events and programming space to grow biotech startups and companies.

Mayor Eric Adams said during his State of The City Address last Thursday that there will be an “emphasis” on making more opportunities for women and people of color to further diversify the industry. The City first reported the news.

The FDA has found a brand new director of the Digital Health Center of Excellence in Troy Tazbaz, a former senior vice president at Oracle.

According to Tazbaz’s LinkedIn, he took a five-month break after leaving an 11-year career at Oracle before joining the FDA in January. Stat News first reported the hire. Tazbaz also said on his LinkedIn that he biked all the way from Chesapeake Bay to the San Francisco Bay over 58 days during his career break.