miércoles, 17 de febrero de 2016

CBER’s Laboratory Quality System Management Helps Keep Biological Product Standards High | FDA Voice

CBER’s Laboratory Quality System Management Helps Keep Biological Product Standards High | FDA Voice

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CBER’s Laboratory Quality System Management Helps Keep Biological Product Standards High

By: Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D.
Part of the vision of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) is to strengthen the Center as the preeminent regulatory organization for biologics. One way CBER is achieving this: Through the work of the Office of Compliance and Biologics Quality (OCBQ) and the Office of Vaccines Research and Review (OVRR).
Peter MarksThese offices play a major role in helping to ensure the safety and quality of products regulated by CBER. Their work shows that CBER isn’t just talking the talk about its vision, it’s also walking the walk to demonstrate the expertise needed to fulfill that vision.
That walk leads directly to OCBQ’s Division of Biological Standards and Quality Control(DBSQC), OVRR’s Laboratory of Immunobiochemistry (LIB), and the Center’s Laboratory Quality System (LQS) Program.
LQS is the coordinated structure, procedures, processes, and resources that the Center uses to evaluate and test CBER-regulated biological products. LQS product testing supports biological product licensing, Lot release and surveillance of licensed biological products, and other Center actions. The LQS program also is critical to the development and evaluation of reference materials, standards, and manufacturers’ assays. This extensive responsibility makes LQS an important link in the chain of regulatory actions that support CBER’s mission to help ensure the safety, purity, and potency of biological products.
CBER is authorized by law to create regulations that authorize OCBQ and OVRR to oversee facilities that manufacture CBER-regulated biological products and the biological products they make. CBER leaders wanted to go further in demonstrating the Center’s commitment to quality systems, and decided to voluntarily submit the LQS program to accreditation by an unbiased, non-governmental, nonprofit third party: the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
ISO sets laboratory accreditation standards for academic and industrial organizations worldwide. Laboratories that receive ISO accreditation can rightly state their test results are precise and reproducible. OCBQ and OVRR accepted the challenge to ensure that their work meets high, internationally recognized standards.
The particular standards CBER sought to meet, called ISO/IEC 17025:2005, are used by testing and calibration laboratories. In the United States, industry laboratories can get accredited to ISO standards by one of many accrediting bodies. CBER turned to theAmerican Association for Laboratory Accreditation (A2LA).
In 2010, CBER received accreditation from A2LA for six methods to test influenza vaccines, including those for sterility and potency, and seven methods for evaluating blood donor screening kits that detect the presence of HIV, HBV, HCV, HTLV-I/II, Trypanosoma cruzi, and West Nile virus.
Additional methods have been accredited since then. CBER’s recent accreditation renewal in October 2015, demonstrated the Center’s competence in 32 test methods previously accredited and added a new laboratory test: evaluating a cELISA allergen test used by CBER for cat hair, ragweed, and dust mites in the newly accredited Laboratory of Immunobiochemistry.
These laboratory accreditations signify that this program is an international leader in biological product regulation based on demonstrated expertise in these laboratory techniques. And they offer more evidence that CBER’s goal of being a preeminent regulatory organization isn’t just a vision, it’s a reality that CBER and FDA, can be proud of.
Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., is Director of FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research

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