Content about Abbreviated New Drug Application

NEW YORK — One of the Food and Drug Administration's chief duties is ensuring the quality of food and drug products, and that was the focus of a keynote address delivered Friday morning by FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg at the Generic Pharmaceutical Association's annual meeting.

In the address, viewed via webcast, Hamburg addressed issues ranging from quality to drug shortages to follow-on biologics, praising the generics industry's role in contributing more than $1 trillion in savings to the healthcare system over the past decade.

SILVER SPRING, Md. — The Food and Drug Administration has set user fee rates for generic drug companies, the agency said Wednesday.

The FDA announced that it had published a notice in the Federal Register for companies that make finished dosage forms, meaning drugs in their final form, and active pharmaceutical ingredients, meaning the main ingredients of the drugs.

PARSIPPANY, N.J. — Watson Pharmaceuticals on Friday confirmed that Actavis, which was acquired by Watson in October, has filed an abbreviated new drug applications with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration seeking approval to market bortezomib, a generic version of Millennium Pharmaceuticals' Velcade.

Bortezomib is a proteasome inhibitor for intravenous or subcutaneous administration, approved for treatment of patients with multiple myeloma and patients with mantle cell lymphoma who have received at least one prior therapy.

Patent settlements between generic and branded drug companies seem like one of the most controversial and long-standing issues in the pharmaceutical world, with strong opinions on both sides.


WOODCLIFF LAKE, N.J. – Par Pharmaceutical Cos. has bought rights to a generic version of a drug used to treat bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

Is the reauthorization of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act “the most important pharmaceutical legislation since the 1984 Hatch-Waxman Act?”

The generic drug industry’s chief spokesman and top lobbyist says so, at any rate. Ralph Neas, president and CEO of the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, called the newly enacted Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act “a remarkable achievement for patients, industry and the FDA.”

SILVER SPRING, Md. — The Food and Drug Administration is asking companies to stop manufacturing and distributing unapproved drugs containing the painkiller oxycodone, the agency said Thursday.

WOODCLIFF LAKE, N.J. — Par Pharmaceutical has bought rights to a generic drug for gastroesophageal reflux disease from Handa Pharmaceuticals, Par said.

Handa, based in Fremont, Calif., sold rights to the regulatory approval application it filed with the Food and Drug Administration for dexlansoprazole capsules, a generic version of Takeda's Dexilant, in the 60-mg strength.

WASHINGTON — The generic drug industry's main lobby is hoping Congress will act on a proposed user fee program for generic drugs that it helped negotiate with the Food and Drug Administration.

For all the talk about generic drugs and their potential to save piles of money for the country’s healthcare system, it’s going to be a while before many of them actually reach consumers because of the Food and Drug Administration’s huge backlog of generic drug regulatory approval applications.


In the classic “Arabian Nights” tale of Aladdin and his magic lamp, the evil sorcerer who made Aladdin retrieve the lamp containing the genie attempts to get it back by tricking Aladdin’s wife into giving it to him by roaming through the streets offering to trade “new lamps for old.”