'Not a horse and pony show': At FDA cell and gene roundtable, officials look for ways to cut red tape

^{"Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. speaking with supporters at a campaign rally at Legends Event Center in Phoenix, Arizona." by Gage Skidmore licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0}

At a June 5 cell and gene therapy roundtable hosted by the FDA, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked the assembled scientists and advocates to provide a list of regulations they’d like to see gone.

“President Trump has given us an executive order that says for every regulation that we put in place, we have to get rid of 10,” the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said. “So we would solicit, right now, a list from all of you of any regulations you think we ought to be getting rid of.”

Speeding up the regulatory process for new cell and gene therapies was one of the roundtable’s recurring themes.

Other major points from the attendees, as summarized by Vinay Prasad, M.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, included the risk of “ceding dominance” in the field to China and using genetic engineering to edit...