Dive Brief:
- Glenn Adam Chin, a former supervising pharmacist at the now-defunct New England Compounding Center (NECC), was arrested by Justice Department officials at Boston Logan International Airport while attempting to board a flight to Hong Kong.
- A tainted batch of injectable steroids mixed at NECC led to a meningitis outbreak that killed more than 60 people and infected nearly 700. This is the first arrest that has been made in the case.
- Chin was charged with one count of mail fraud for allegedly fraudulently labeling a batch of the steroids as injectable and sending them to a facility in Michigan. It is unclear if Chin was attempting to flee the country.
Dive Insight:
According to the DOJ criminal complaint, Chin participated "in a scheme to fraudulently cause one lot of [steroids] to be labeled as injectable, meaning that it was sterile and fit for human use, and shipped to one of NECC’s customers, Michigan Pain Specialists... As a result, 217 of those patients contracted fungal meningitis, of which 15 died."
This is the first arrest in this case -- but it is unlikely to be the last. The case has also brought increased scrutiny on the compounding pharmaceutical sector, with many legislators and advocates claiming that the industry is not sufficiently regulated by the FDA and state authorities.