(Adds quote from FDA commissioner)
May 17 (Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday listed drugmakers, including Celgene Corp, Mylan NV, Gilead Sciences and Novartis AG , who the regulator says are potentially blocking access to samples of their drugs to delay generic competition.
Generic drugmakers may not be able to develop alternatives without access to samples of branded products, the FDA said.
"I want to be very clear: a path to securing samples of brand drugs for the purpose of generic drug development should always be available," FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a statement.
He said this should be true even in cases where there is limited access to drugs for safety reasons.
The regulator said it has also heard of some brand companies adopting tactics to make it hard for the generic companies to purchase branded drugs at a fair value and in open market.
The list of dozens of companies is on the FDA's website at https://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DevelopmentApprovalProcess/HowDrugsareDevelopedandAppr o v e d / A p p r o v a l A p p l i c a t i o n s / A b b r e v i a t e d N e w D r u g A p p l i c a t i o n A N D A G e n e r i c s / u c m 6 0 7 7 3 8 . h t m . (Reporting by Michael Erman in New York and Manas Mishra in Bengaluru Editing by Susan Thomas)