Gottlieb: FDA Hiring Freeze Lifted, Plans for Increased Generic Competition Coming

US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb was in the hot seat on Thursday to defend President Donald Trump’s budget plan to the House appropriations subcommittee, though the conversation quickly dovetailed away from the billion-dollar user fee increase proposed, and revealed that FDA as of Thursday is no longer subject to a federal hiring freeze.

Donald Trump’s healthcare budget outlines FDA, NIH cuts

President Donald Trump’s administration has released a breakdown of its attempts to cut back on healthcare and research spending across the government, with proposed cuts to governmental biomedical research centers and the drugs regulator laid down in the fleshed-out budget.

IBM Research partners in Australia to find melanoma via cognitive computing

IBM Research in Australia is partnering with Melanoma Institute Australia on identifying melanoma using cognitive technology.  The team will conduct research to build on IBM’s work with MoleMap.  MoleMap uses visual analytics to analyze more than 40,000 data sets that include images and text.

Cardiac patch could be a better pacemaker, help with cardiac drug testing

A “bionic” cardiac patch has been developed by researchers at Harvard.  Charles Lieber, Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard, and Postdoctoral Fellow Xiaochuan Dai co-authored a study regarding the cardiac patch, which was published in Nature Nanotechnology.

FDA Delays UDI Requirements for Low-Risk Devices

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday, June 2, 2017 notified medical device labelers that it is extending the compliance dates for certain unique device identifier (UDI) requirements for Class I and unclassified devices.

New blood biomarker could enhance early detection of heart attack risk

When it comes to predicting who is at risk of suffering a heart attack or other major cardiac events, physicians have long relied on detecting high levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), an inflammatory biomarker.  However, new research suggests CRP may not be the only game in town.