In 2019, only 1.2 percent of global clinical studies included India, even though it’s estimated that the country bears 20 percent of the global disease burden.1 One reason for the slow growth of clinical research in India has been the country’s stringent regulatory requirements. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, responsible for all health...
The clinical trial industry has been steadily undergoing a data evolution. Data from remote capture devices, such as wearables and other novel sources (e.g., increasingly large health data repositories and electronic healthcare data), have gained importance. Proper management and utilization of such data allows sponsors to untether from a set roster of trial sites, focus...
The ultimate goal of any drug development program is to obtain regulatory approval with the desired prescribing information. Beyond that, developers hope to obtain this approval in the shortest amount of time and with the most efficient use of resources. In an article published in Trends in Biotechnology,1 researchers found that the approved drugs and...
Phase 1 clinical trials aim to determine the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) of a new molecule with the goal of identifying a recommended Phase 2 dose (RP2D), often the MTD itself. Ideally, the RP2D would have adequate therapeutic effect to demonstrate preliminary signs of efficacy in Phase 2, but many Phase 2 trials fail to...
Introduction Although medical device development is similar in many ways to drug development, devices are subject to different regulatory requirements and approval pathways than drugs. There are also key differences in the rules for the clinical investigations needed to support marketing approval, in part due to the durable nature of devices, which may be implanted...
When developing a long-term follow-up strategy for gene therapy trials, safety is the main concern, closely followed by the patient perspective. Digital technologies and monitoring have proven essential to this, easing the burden on the patient, and providing accurate, time-saving methods of data management. Momentum is increasing in the field of gene therapy, with over...
Though gene therapy has been around for decades, it continues to pose extraordinary challenges in the areas of R&D, clinical development, and operation of clinical trials. Sponsors and CROs face shifting operational and regulatory demands amid rapid advances in the science of precision medicine. In our previous blog post, we discussed site selection, manufacturing, long-term...
Designing and conducting a gene therapy trial is a complex undertaking. Understanding, planning for, and overcoming the myriad challenges of operationalizing these studies will help you bring safe, breakthrough treatments to patients with unmet medical needs. In this blog post, we introduce a case study as a framework for exploring critical study design considerations of...
As scientific knowledge, clinical experience, and acceptance of gene therapy products have evolved, so have the regulatory frameworks for ensuring the safety of these novel treatments. To date, there is no harmonized international standard for regulating gene therapy products; however, the U.S., EU, and Japan have established regulatory frameworks with subtle variations. Understanding how gene...
Rare cancers account for 27 percent of all new cancer diagnoses in the U.S. and 22 percent of all new cancer diagnoses in the EU.1 With their poorly understood natural histories, phenotypic heterogeneity, and diverse clinical manifestations, rare cancers pose challenges to drug development and represent a significant unmet need in oncology. Faced with limited treatment...