The scope and complexity of requirements for global clinical trial disclosures and data sharing have increased substantially over the last 20 years. Most leading countries have specific regulations pertaining to trial conduct, and many have set up patient registries for collecting and analyzing data on patient outcomes. More recently, authorities have initiated inspections relating to disclosure to ensure compliance with regulations, and transparency advocates continue to ...

There is an unprecedented level of support among regulators to advance the adoption of decentralized clinical trials, yet companies that undertake this mode of research need to be mindful of some of the challenges that can derail these efforts. Sponsors should keep their computer systems secure, closely adhere to patient privacy laws, as well as follow good clinical practices and adopt flexible uses of technology to ensure data can be collected remotely.   So assert...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has now published four draft guidances spelling out how it will consider real-world data (RWD) in regulatory decision-making, from the use of electronic health records and registries to RWD in non-interventional studies. More guidance documents are planned, including details on study designs that incorporate RWD for external control arms.   External control arms, which use data collected outside of the current trial to provide ...

A new set of implementing acts adopted by the European Commission outlines what EU reference laboratories need to consider in order to serve their customers. The regulations address issues such as how to ensure the labs have proper training and resources to handle workloads as well as how to ensure pricing transparency.   On 17 June, the Commission published two regulations on EU reference labs that may be used by notified bodies and member states to give technical ass...

Drugmakers and clinician organizations praised the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) recent draft guidance containing recommendations on developing a Race and Ethnicity Diversity Plan to improve enrollment of underrepresented racial and ethnic groups in clinical trials. But in public comments, they also called for greater details on the types of data that should be used to assess adequate enrollment of these populations, how these diversity plans should be applied to...

The US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) top drug official said the pandemic has prompted the agency to consider new ways of working going forward and has renewed calls for industry to embrace digital technologies and decentralized models for conducting clinical trials. The pandemic has also prompted the agency to re-evaluate its hiring practices, and to adopt the use of alternative tools in lieu of onsite inspections, which have become a permanent fixture in the agency...

A study conducted by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and European Medicines Agency (EMA) found that the agencies are identifying the same types of deficiencies in joint good clinical practice (GCP) inspections with respect to protocol compliance, documentation deviations, and human subject protections.   The paper follows a mutual transatlantic cooperation on GCPs between the regulators that went into effect on 1 September 2009. Under the program, regulators ...

The European Commission’s Medical Device Coordination Group (MDCG) on 20 May issued a   question and answer guidance to help the medical device industry comply with unique device identification (UDI) requirements under the Medical Device Regulation (MDR) and the In Vitro Diagnostic Regulation (IVDR).   The 14-page document covers 25 questions regarding UDI device identifiers (UDI-DI), UDI labeling, UDI rules for systems and procedures packs and configurable devices, a...

Feature articles during April examined the roles of the regulatory specialist and generalist and the application of regulatory intelligence (RI) in managing the new EU In Vitro Diagnostic Medical Devices Regulation (IVDR), developing an in-house regulatory database in the oncology setting, and strategic planning. Also included are articles on expedited regulatory pathway options, selecting control groups in pediatric clinical trials, and the role of artificial intelligence...

The International Council for Harmonization (ICH) on Tuesday released a draft ICH E11A guideline that establishes a framework for extrapolating drug development data from adult trials to the pediatric population.   “This new ICH guideline aims to promote international harmonization of methodologies and strategies to incorporate paediatric extrapolation into overall drug development plans and to improve the speed of access to new drugs for paediatric patients, while l...

While a lot of researchers claim they are capturing digital biomarker data, they may in fact be collecting clinical outcomes assessment (COA) data according to some US regulators. To clarify the differences, top US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials have defined digital biomarkers versus other kinds of data in a new article.   According to FDA officials in an article published on 25 March in npj Digital Medicine , a digital biomarker is “a characteristic o...

ICH E10 provides specific guidance on the choice of control groups for clinical trials, but there are additional considerations for choosing a control group for a pediatric trial. In this article, the author looks at different types of control groups and the specific challenges that present when considering the design for a pediatric trial, such as the medical condition being treated, the potential patient population, suitability of comparators, and availability of real-wo...