FDA Regulatory

The July 2025 edition of FDA in Flux highlights five significant developments shaping the regulatory landscape for medical, life sciences, and consumer product sectors.

The obvious result of the legal shootout between the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and clinical laboratory trade associations, the American Clinical Laboratory Association and the Association for Molecular Pathology, in the Eastern District of Texas to determine whether the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) permits the agency to regulate laboratory developed tests (LDTs) is a complete victory for clinical laboratories. The U.S. district judge’s decision, issued on March 31, 2025, vacated the May 2024 final rule through which FDA sought to specify that LDTs are agency-regulated in vitro diagnostic products (IVDs) and to describe a plan for phasing-in enforcement of existing medical device regulations for such products over four years (see our previous posts on the LDT final rule here and here). In adopting the plaintiffs’ arguments wholesale, however, the judge created some incongruities in the relevant regulatory frameworks, as well as several quandaries for FDA and the clinical laboratory industry going forward. These inconsistencies could have greater consequences down the road if the Trump administration decides not to appeal the ruling.

We have written at length about the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) actions to promulgate regulations specifying the agency’s authority to regulate laboratory developed tests (LDTs) as medical devices and to phase out the agency’s historical approach of enforcement discretion towards such tests (see here, here, here, and here). However, one infrequently considered regulatory compliance issue for LDTs is their reliance on separate specimen collection devices or convenience kits. All LDTs require the use of some form of biological specimen, such as blood or saliva, which may be collected by health care professionals in a clinical setting or by consumers in their homes before being submitted to a laboratory for testing. 

In this fireside discussion, Mintz attorney Joanne Hawana and Aaron Josephson and Anthony DeMaio from ML Strategies explored policy activities that will likely have the greatest impact on stakeholders in 2021, and how the new Administration may impact the FDA in the year ahead and beyond.

Politics will have an effect on FDA policies in 2021, including with respect to the ongoing COVID-19 response, manufacturing, compliance, digital health, laboratories, user fees, device servicing, and more.

What a year for the Food and Drug Administration! FDA, an agency with regulatory oversight of 20-25% of products on which consumers spend, including food and medicines, but which typically stays out of the limelight, was thrust into the public eye amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. This was the year many Americans became familiar with lesser-known and niche policies like those governing emergency use authorizations (EUAs) and with the role of FDA in regulating laboratory developed tests (LDTs). The agency also took some flak for seeming to bow to political pressure in authorizing hydroxychloroquine for emergency use as a potential COVID-19 treatment, then rescinding the authorization, as well as for its less-than-accurate pronouncements of positive data concerning convalescent plasma treatment. These were reminders that the agency Americans trust to protect the public does get things wrong sometimes and is susceptible in some ways to political pressure, and that effectively ensuring the public health requires a balance between safety and effectiveness and patient access to medical products. As we look ahead, we eagerly anticipate how FDA will protect and promote public health in a Biden administration. In this post we’ll explore the FDA’s device law and policy activities from 2020.

Back in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, we published a post outlining the different kinds of diagnostic tests that were being marketed and the different roles of the two main federal regulators that oversee the quality of different subsets of tests. Since then, there have been some important policy developments affecting diagnostic and antibody testing. There also has been significant growth in the number of tests authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for point-of-care uses in various patient settings such as clinics, emergency departments, and physician offices. Read on for an update about these developments.

Responding to increased public and congressional criticism of its arguably too-flexible approach to regulatory oversight of serological tests used to detect COVID-19 antibodies, on May 4, 2020 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a revised policy aimed at reducing the risks associated with such tests.

As we write this update on the actions of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), more state and local governments (along with private businesses and employers) are taking sweeping actions to protect the public from the continued spread of COVID-19. The federal response to what is now a pandemic of COVID-19 started off slowly, but we are now seeing frequent and promising announcements from FDA and other agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services.

We published our first installment highlighting FDA’s role in this public health emergency on March 4, 2020 (see our prior post here). In the two weeks that have elapsed since then, FDA has taken several actions related to COVID-19 testing and other important public health protections which are explained below. One of the most striking things about the list of actions included in this post may be how diverse and broad FDA’s authorities are and what a substantial role the agency plays in protecting Americans from a variety of different types of harm.

Following years of discussion, on March 5, 2020, U.S. Representatives Larry Buchson (R-IN) and Diana DeGette (D-CO) and U.S. Senators Richard Burr (R-NC) and Michael Bennet (D-CO) introduced identical versions of the Verifying Accurate and Leading-edge IVCT Development (VALID) Act in both chambers of Congress. The bipartisan legislation closely tracks existing medical device laws, with some notable exceptions, discussed below and in a prior post. If enacted, many regulatory elements familiar to in vitro diagnostic (IVD) and other medical device manufacturers would be applied to clinical laboratories that develop their own tests, commonly known as laboratory developed tests (LDTs). The bill also includes elements that are priorities for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), including a program conceptually similar to pre-certification, third-party review, and Collaborative Communities. Unlike previously-circulated discussion drafts, the introduced bills include specific language designed to address public health emergencies, including COVID-19.