Warning Letter: Failure to maintain complete data (ucm465626)

“2. Failure to prevent unauthorized access or changes to data and to provide adequate controls to prevent omission of data.

Your laboratory systems lacked access controls to prevent raw data from being deleted or altered. For example:

a. During the inspection, we noted that you had no unique usernames, passwords, or user access levelsfor analysts on multiple laboratory systems. All laboratory employees were granted full privileges to the computer systems. They could delete or alter chromatograms, methods, integration parameters, and data acquisition date and time stamps. You used data generated by these unprotected and uncontrolled systems to evaluate API quality.

b. Multiple instruments had no audit trail functions to record data changes.

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3. Failure to maintain complete data derived from all testing, and to ensure compliance with established specifications and standards.

Because you discarded necessary chromatographic information such as integration parameters and injection sequences from test records, you relied on incomplete records to evaluate the quality of your APIs and to determine whether your APIs conformed with established specifications and standards. For example:

a. During the inspection, the investigator found no procedures for manual integration or review of electronic and printed analytical data for [redacted] stability samples. Electronic integration parameters were not saved or recorded manually. When the next samples were analyzed, the previous parameters were overwritten during the subsequent analyses.

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i. Your HPLC 14 computer files included raw data for undocumented [redacted] stability samples analyzed on December 30, 2013, but no indication of where these samples came from and why they were tested.

ii. In a data file folder created on May 22, 2013, 23 chromatograms were identified as stability samples for [redacted] lots [redacted], and [redacted]. Results were not documented. More importantly, the acquisition date was July 7, 2013, more than six weeks after the samples were run.

iii. (b)(4) lots (b)(4) and (b)(4) were not in your stability study records at the time of inspection. Additionally, there were no log notes of any samples from the three lots removed from the stability chamber.

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In response to this letter, provide your revised procedures and describe steps you have taken to retrain employees to ensure retention of complete electronic raw data for all laboratory instrumentation and equipment. Also, provide a detailed description of the responsibilities of your quality control laboratory management, and quality assurance unit for performing analytical data review and assuring integrity (including reconcilability) of all data generated by your laboratory.”

View the original warning letter.