New drug ap­pli­ca­tions pile up with de­lays as there's no easy fix for the in­spec­tion back­log

The FDA’s back­log of drug man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty in­spec­tions con­tin­ues to be a sore spot for the agency, as FDA said Mon­day that a to­tal of 52 new drug (but no bi­o­log­ics) ap­pli­ca­tions still re­main de­layed due to the back­log from the pan­dem­ic.

And while the agency has main­tained that it won’t is­sue a CRL for a de­layed in­spec­tion, the num­ber of de­layed ap­pli­ca­tions is ris­ing as FDA said in May that 48 new drug ap­pli­ca­tions have been de­layed due to FDA’s in­abil­i­ty to con­duct pre-ap­proval, pre-mar­ket, or pre-li­cense in­spec­tions as of last March.

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