FDA reopening comment period on immunogenicity risk of host cell proteins

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is reopening the comment period for the Federal Register notice (FRN), “Evaluating the Immunogenicity Risk of Host Cell Proteins in Follow-on Recombinant Peptide Products: Establishment of a Public Docket: Request for Information and Comments” due to high interest from industry.

This notice establishes a public docket seeking substantive comments from interested parties on evaluating the immunogenicity risk of host cell proteins. For the purposes of this request, the FDA is specifically interested in comments on suitable methods to detect, identify and control host cell proteins in commercial lots of recombinant peptide products (including information on achievable residual amounts of host cell proteins in the drug product) as well as in vitro, in silico immunogenicity assessment (IVISIA) of host cell proteins in recombinant peptide products.

Although follow-on recombinant peptide products can rely on the FDA’s findings of safety and effectiveness for a listed drug that is a peptide product, differences in recombinant expression systems used during the peptide production could result in quality attribute differences, including in the host cell protein profile, which in turn, could contribute to differences in immunogenicity risk between a follow-on peptide product and the relied upon listed drug.