Federal Consumer Protection Grants

Modified release (MR) oral drug products are considered to have a high risk for alcohol dose dumping (ADD) because they contain large quantities of drug(s), designed to release over a prolonged period of time. Accidental exposure of these products to alcohol can result in the relatively rapid release of large quantities of drug with severe side effects, including death. To mitigate this risk, the FDA recommends conducting an in vitro alcohol dose dumping assessment in 0%, 5%, 20%, and 40% alcoholic dissolution media for all prospective generic versions of MR oral drug products. To date, ADD assessments have not been harmonized globally. For instance, the U.S. FDA recommends testing up to 40% alcoholic media while the European Medicines Agency recommends testing up to 20% alcoholic media. This type of difference can present a challenge for formulators designing products for multiple markets, as historical data has shown release from MR oral products do not always follow a linear response (either increasing or decreasing) to increasing alcohol concentrations. In addition, interpretation of an ADD assessment may be limited by the inability of the test to predict in vivo behavior. The purpose of this research is to develop tools that 1) facilitate the development of MR generic drug products that have a low potential for ADD, 2) support regulatory decision making during the assessment of such products, and 3) provide evidence that enables FDA to develop more specific recommendations for efficiently demonstrating a low or comparative potential of alcohol dose dumping for MR oral drug products containing high risk drugs.

The purpose of this funding opportunity is to support the research and development necessary to advance non-invasive (e.g., quantitative tomography-based) technologies, including the development of apparatus, methods, study designs, and methods of data analysis, to characterize and compare the rate and extent to which a topically applied drug becomes available at or near a site of action within the skin in vivo. The expectation is that the funded work will produce an accurate, sensitive and reproducible approach that rapidly measures the (relative) amount of drug present in the skin at a series of depths below the skin surface, which can be utilized to monitor the cutaneous pharmacokinetics (PK) of the drug at selected depths (e.g., in the epidermis) by repeated, serial measurements over time. The intent is to support the eventual development of an alternative, scientifically valid, in vivo cutaneous PK-based approach that can be used to efficiently demonstrate the bioequivalence (BE) of topical products.

This funding opportunity provides financial support to various organizations, including universities and non-profits, to improve veterinary diagnostic capabilities and address public health issues related to animal food safety and antimicrobial resistance.

The "Clinical Studies of Orphan Products Addressing Unmet Needs of Rare Diseases (R01) Clinical Trials Required" grant aims to fund clinical trials that test the effectiveness and safety of new treatments for rare diseases, with the goal of increasing the number of approved treatments for these conditions.