Support for the revocation of general safety test regulations in biologics license applications

The United States Food and Drug Administration recently removed the requirement for a General Safety Test (GST) for biologics in the Code of Federal Regulations (21 CFR 610.11). The GST, as well as abnormal toxicity (European Pharmacopeia) and innocuity tests (World Health Organization), were designed to test for extraneous toxic contaminants on each product lot intended for human use. Tests require one-week observations for general health and weight following injection of specified volumes of product batches into guinea pigs and mice. At the volumes specified, dose-related toxicity may result when the product is pharmacologically active in rodents. With vaccines, required doses may be > 3 logs higher than intended human dose on a weight-adjusted basis and if an immune modulatory adjuvant is included, systemic immune hyperactivation may cause toxicity. Herein, using the CpG/alum adjuvant combination we evaluated the different test protocols and showed their unsuitability for this adjuvant combination.