Spring Unified Agenda: FDA’s Anticipated Upcoming Regulatory Work

Posted on May 9, 2018 by FDA Voice

By: Scott Gottlieb, M.D.

Today, the federal government published the Spring 2018 “Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions” (Unified Agenda), which provides federal agencies with the opportunity to update the American public on our government’s regulatory priorities.

For its part, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continues to make swift progress on our regulatory agenda, which reflects the key strategic priorities of the FDA and the Administration. Our regulatory agenda reflects our adherence to science based decision making and our commitment to our mission to protect and promote public health.

I provided a detailed overview of many of our proposed regulations for 2018 around the release of the Unified Agenda last fall – most of which we continue to take forward. I’d like to take this opportunity to highlight for you some of FDA’s new contributions to the Spring Unified Agenda.

Addressing the Nicotine Addiction Crisis

Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death and disease. And too many young people are still being initiated on tobacco products, and becoming addicted to nicotine.

We’ve taken steps to address the morbidity and mortality associated with tobacco through the comprehensive plan that we announced last summer. We’re considering regulating the nicotine levels in combustible cigarettes, to render cigarettes minimally or non-addictive.

At the same time, we’re continuing to advance our framework for how we’ll regulate both novel nicotine delivery products, such as e-cigarettes, and traditional tobacco products. One goal of our efforts is to encourage innovation of less harmful products. We will ensure that all tobacco products, whatever their nicotine content or delivery mechanism, are put through an appropriate series of regulatory gates to maximize any public health benefits and minimize harms.

To that end, we will be proposing a new regulation to establish product standards for electronic nicotine delivery systems or ENDS. The proposed standard will, among other things, address the levels of toxicants and impurities found in nicotine, propylene glycol, and vegetable glycerin e-liquid, as these toxicants and impurities can cause death or other adverse health effects.

As part of our comprehensive plan, we’re also working hard to prevent access to products we believe are adulterated or misbranded. We recently joined with the Federal Trade Commission to issue 13 joint warning letters to companies that misleadingly labeled or advertised nicotine-containing e-liquids as kid-friendly food products (juice boxes, candies, and cookies).

As part of our comprehensive approach, we’ll also be proposing new regulations to establish requirements for the administrative detention of tobacco products encountered during an inspection that an officer or employee believes to be adulterated or misbranded. These steps will allow us to more effectively block the distribution and use of products that are ultimately found to be violative, including products that are misbranded because their labeling or advertising causes them to resemble kid-friendly foods.

Modernizing and Harmonizing Standards

As part of our efforts to continue to ensure efficiency of existing regulations, we will be taking another step to modernize medical device regulation, by proposing a new regulation to replace certain aspects of existing Quality System regulations with specifications of an international consensus standard for medical device manufactures (ISO). This rule, if finalized, will harmonize domestic and international requirements and modernize the regulation to make it more efficient for manufacturers of medical devices seeking to sell their products globally, while also continuing to ensure they adhere to high, internationally-accepted quality systems.

Enhancing Clinical Trial Processes

The Spring Unified Agenda also will propose rules to support the clinical trial process, for instance regarding the requirements for cooperative research. We’re proposing a new rule that would, in most cases, allow any institution located in the U.S. that is participating in a multisite cooperative research to be able to rely on approval from a single institutional review board.

We also will be issuing a proposed rule to update the agency’s investigational new drug application regulations to define and clarify the roles and responsibilities of the various persons engaged in clinical investigations to enhance protection of the rights, safety, and welfare of subjects and better ensure the integrity of clinical trials.

In addition to the new proposed regulations I’m highlighting here, FDA will continue to pursue a multitude of other important rules across the Agency, such as taking forward our compounding policy priorities and advancing food and drug safety initiatives. Moreover, we continue to remove outdated rules or reconsider proposed rules in light of our evolving policy priorities. I want to note, however, that some previously identified regulations that weren’t included in this Unified Agenda may still remain FDA priorities. Just because you don’t see them here, doesn’t mean that we don’t intend to continue advancing some prior policy proposals.

While we continue to have a robust regulatory agenda for the coming year, regulation is only one way in which we can foster our mission and improve public health. We’ll continue to tackle many additional priority areas through guidance documents and other policy efforts. These areas will include efforts to reduce the cost of drugs by encouraging competition – including in biosimilars; spurring innovation across medical products; battling obesity through our various nutrition initiatives; and, continuing to attack the opioid addiction crisis facing our country.

I look forward to keeping you updated as we progress toward these goals.

Scott Gottlieb, M.D., is Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Follow Commissioner Gottlieb on Twitter @SGottliebFDA