FDA

One size doesn’t fit all? FDA may soften some cell therapy regs

dr. peter marks fda, cell therapy

The Pink Sheet just broke the story that the FDA may change up its oversight of the cell therapy space. This possible shift could drop the oversight bar somewhat for certain products. Most likely it’d be those with lower anticipated risks. The Pink Sheet piece by Sue Sutter is titled US FDA To Explore New Regulatory Pathways […]

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End of FDA “grace period” impacted perinatal cell therapy biotechs

knot in umbilical cord, perinatal cell therapy

If there’s one area of biologics where the FDA has been consistently busy lately it’s the perinatal cell therapy space. The agency has made it clear in the last year that allogeneic birth-related cell products are often drugs requiring premarket approval. This has mainly manifested at a practical enforcement level. We’ve seen actions taken in

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FDA news: warning letter pattern, cancer moonshot, CAR-T & gene-editing guidance

FDA-draft-guidance

The FDA has been busy with the COVID pandemic but it has many other things on its plate as well including cell therapies. Today I’m sharing some recent agency news and brief perspectives on it. FDA focus on clinic-related umbilical cord cell drug makers The agency warned an Idaho company that produces and sells umbilical

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Turner pub charts runaway stem cell clinic industry; FDA needs to think big now

U.S. Stem cell clinics map 2021.

Leigh Turner’s new Cell Stem Cell paper on the unproven stem cell clinic industry following up on our collaborative work together in 2015-2016 is great work but very discouraging. He found more than 2,700 clinics run by more than 1,000 firms in the U.S. This is several-fold growth since 2016. I’m very glad that Leigh has continued this line of

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Weekly recommended reads including asymmetric division & chromatin

Asymmetric division and chromatin

One of my favorite types of papers are those on stem cells and chromatin, and a new one in Current Biology caught my eye this week. My own lab website has the URL chromatin.com so that says something. You can also read more about our research here. Recommended reads: chromatin and stem cells, more Asymmetric

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Translating the FDA’s Q&A on end of stem cell grace period

The Rosetta Stone, The FDA

The FDA grace period for stem cell clinics and others using regenerative medicine products like stem cells is over. It appears the agency is serious about enforcement moving forward. They have released several statements about the end of what they call the “enforcement discretion” period, which just means in English a grace period for marketers

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FDA to end ‘grace period’ on stem cell clinics: agency should ‘go big’ on continued offenders

stem cell clinics map

Stem cell clinics violating federal regulations have been a major problem for the FDA. Next month the FDA faces a historic moment on this problem. A grace period for clinics to become FDA compliant ends in May. Even so, it appears that hundreds of clinics will remain non-compliant after that. Some of the worst clinics

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