FDA moves to boost domestic drug supply

The Food and Drug Administration is launching a new program to ramp up the United States’ domestic pharmaceutical supply chain, the agency announced Thursday.

The program, called FDA PreCheck, is aimed at streamlining the pharmaceutical plant regulatory process. The FDA says this will in turn make it easier to build drug manufacturing sites within the U.S.

FDA PreCheck would speed up the process in two phases. The first phase would provide more frequent communication between the FDA and manufacturers on developmental stages including facility design, construction and pre-production.

The second phase would allow for pre-application meetings and early feedback on how a drug product will be manufactured and controlled.

“Our gradual overreliance on foreign drug manufacturing has created na