Rare Diseases and Orphan Products


Book Description

Rare diseases collectively affect millions of Americans of all ages, but developing drugs and medical devices to prevent, diagnose, and treat these conditions is challenging. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommends implementing an integrated national strategy to promote rare diseases research and product development.




Improving and Accelerating Therapeutic Development for Nervous System Disorders


Book Description

Improving and Accelerating Therapeutic Development for Nervous System Disorders is the summary of a workshop convened by the IOM Forum on Neuroscience and Nervous System Disorders to examine opportunities to accelerate early phases of drug development for nervous system drug discovery. Workshop participants discussed challenges in neuroscience research for enabling faster entry of potential treatments into first-in-human trials, explored how new and emerging tools and technologies may improve the efficiency of research, and considered mechanisms to facilitate a more effective and efficient development pipeline. There are several challenges to the current drug development pipeline for nervous system disorders. The fundamental etiology and pathophysiology of many nervous system disorders are unknown and the brain is inaccessible to study, making it difficult to develop accurate models. Patient heterogeneity is high, disease pathology can occur years to decades before becoming clinically apparent, and diagnostic and treatment biomarkers are lacking. In addition, the lack of validated targets, limitations related to the predictive validity of animal models - the extent to which the model predicts clinical efficacy - and regulatory barriers can also impede translation and drug development for nervous system disorders. Improving and Accelerating Therapeutic Development for Nervous System Disorders identifies avenues for moving directly from cellular models to human trials, minimizing the need for animal models to test efficacy, and discusses the potential benefits and risks of such an approach. This report is a timely discussion of opportunities to improve early drug development with a focus toward preclinical trials.




The Prevention and Treatment of Missing Data in Clinical Trials


Book Description

Randomized clinical trials are the primary tool for evaluating new medical interventions. Randomization provides for a fair comparison between treatment and control groups, balancing out, on average, distributions of known and unknown factors among the participants. Unfortunately, these studies often lack a substantial percentage of data. This missing data reduces the benefit provided by the randomization and introduces potential biases in the comparison of the treatment groups. Missing data can arise for a variety of reasons, including the inability or unwillingness of participants to meet appointments for evaluation. And in some studies, some or all of data collection ceases when participants discontinue study treatment. Existing guidelines for the design and conduct of clinical trials, and the analysis of the resulting data, provide only limited advice on how to handle missing data. Thus, approaches to the analysis of data with an appreciable amount of missing values tend to be ad hoc and variable. The Prevention and Treatment of Missing Data in Clinical Trials concludes that a more principled approach to design and analysis in the presence of missing data is both needed and possible. Such an approach needs to focus on two critical elements: (1) careful design and conduct to limit the amount and impact of missing data and (2) analysis that makes full use of information on all randomized participants and is based on careful attention to the assumptions about the nature of the missing data underlying estimates of treatment effects. In addition to the highest priority recommendations, the book offers more detailed recommendations on the conduct of clinical trials and techniques for analysis of trial data.




Small Clinical Trials


Book Description

Clinical trials are used to elucidate the most appropriate preventive, diagnostic, or treatment options for individuals with a given medical condition. Perhaps the most essential feature of a clinical trial is that it aims to use results based on a limited sample of research participants to see if the intervention is safe and effective or if it is comparable to a comparison treatment. Sample size is a crucial component of any clinical trial. A trial with a small number of research participants is more prone to variability and carries a considerable risk of failing to demonstrate the effectiveness of a given intervention when one really is present. This may occur in phase I (safety and pharmacologic profiles), II (pilot efficacy evaluation), and III (extensive assessment of safety and efficacy) trials. Although phase I and II studies may have smaller sample sizes, they usually have adequate statistical power, which is the committee's definition of a "large" trial. Sometimes a trial with eight participants may have adequate statistical power, statistical power being the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis when the hypothesis is false. Small Clinical Trials assesses the current methodologies and the appropriate situations for the conduct of clinical trials with small sample sizes. This report assesses the published literature on various strategies such as (1) meta-analysis to combine disparate information from several studies including Bayesian techniques as in the confidence profile method and (2) other alternatives such as assessing therapeutic results in a single treated population (e.g., astronauts) by sequentially measuring whether the intervention is falling above or below a preestablished probability outcome range and meeting predesigned specifications as opposed to incremental improvement.




Adaptive Design Methods in Clinical Trials


Book Description

With new statistical and scientific issues arising in adaptive clinical trial design, including the U.S. FDA's recent draft guidance, a new edition of one of the first books on the topic is needed. Adaptive Design Methods in Clinical Trials, Second Edition reflects recent developments and regulatory positions on the use of adaptive designs in clini




The Role of NIH in Drug Development Innovation and Its Impact on Patient Access


Book Description

To explore the role of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in innovative drug development and its impact on patient access, the Board on Health Care Services and the Board on Health Sciences Policy of the National Academies jointly hosted a public workshop on July 24â€"25, 2019, in Washington, DC. Workshop speakers and participants discussed the ways in which federal investments in biomedical research are translated into innovative therapies and considered approaches to ensure that the public has affordable access to the resulting new drugs. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.




Basic Principles of Drug Discovery and Development


Book Description

Basic Principles of Drug Discovery and Development presents the multifaceted process of identifying a new drug in the modern era, which requires a multidisciplinary team approach with input from medicinal chemists, biologists, pharmacologists, drug metabolism experts, toxicologists, clinicians, and a host of experts from numerous additional fields. Enabling technologies such as high throughput screening, structure-based drug design, molecular modeling, pharmaceutical profiling, and translational medicine are critical to the successful development of marketable therapeutics. Given the wide range of disciplines and techniques that are required for cutting edge drug discovery and development, a scientist must master their own fields as well as have a fundamental understanding of their collaborator's fields. This book bridges the knowledge gaps that invariably lead to communication issues in a new scientist's early career, providing a fundamental understanding of the various techniques and disciplines required for the multifaceted endeavor of drug research and development. It provides students, new industrial scientists, and academics with a basic understanding of the drug discovery and development process. The fully updated text provides an excellent overview of the process and includes chapters on important drug targets by class, in vitro screening methods, medicinal chemistry strategies in drug design, principles of in vivo pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, animal models of disease states, clinical trial basics, and selected business aspects of the drug discovery process. - Provides a clear explanation of how the pharmaceutical industry works, as well as the complete drug discovery and development process, from obtaining a lead, to testing the bioactivity, to producing the drug, and protecting the intellectual property - Includes a new chapter on the discovery and development of biologics (antibodies proteins, antibody/receptor complexes, antibody drug conjugates), a growing and important area of the pharmaceutical industry landscape - Features a new section on formulations, including a discussion of IV formulations suitable for human clinical trials, as well as the application of nanotechnology and the use of transdermal patch technology for drug delivery - Updated chapter with new case studies includes additional modern examples of drug discovery through high through-put screening, fragment-based drug design, and computational chemistry




Modern Methods of Clinical Investigation


Book Description

The very rapid pace of advances in biomedical research promises us a wide range of new drugs, medical devices, and clinical procedures. The extent to which these discoveries will benefit the public, however, depends in large part on the methods we choose for developing and testing them. Modern Methods of Clinical Investigation focuses on strategies for clinical evaluation and their role in uncovering the actual benefits and risks of medical innovation. Essays explore differences in our current systems for evaluating drugs, medical devices, and clinical procedures; health insurance databases as a tool for assessing treatment outcomes; the role of the medical profession, the Food and Drug Administration, and industry in stimulating the use of evaluative methods; and more. This book will be of special interest to policymakers, regulators, executives in the medical industry, clinical researchers, and physicians.




Dose Finding in Drug Development


Book Description

If you have ever wondered when visiting the pharmacy how the dosage of your prescription is determined this book will answer your questions. Dosing information on drug labels is based on discussion between the pharmaceutical manufacturer and the drug regulatory agency, and the label is a summary of results obtained from many scientific experiments. The book introduces the drug development process, the design and the analysis of clinical trials. Many of the discussions are based on applications of statistical methods in the design and analysis of dose response studies. Important procedural steps from a pharmaceutical industry perspective are also examined.




New Drug Development


Book Description

New Drug Development: Second Edition provides an overview of the design concepts and statistical practices involved in therapeutic drug development. This wide spectrum of activities begins with identifying a potentially useful drug candidate that can perhaps be used in the treatment or prevention of a condition of clinical concern, and ends with marketing approval being granted by one or more regulatory agencies. In between, it includes drug molecule optimization, nonclinical and clinical evaluations of the drug’s safety and efficacy profiles, and manufacturing considerations. The more inclusive term lifecycle drug development can be used to encompass the postmarketing surveillance that is conducted all the time that a drug is on the market and being prescribed to patients with the relevant clinical condition. Information gathered during this time can be used to modify the drug (for example, dose prescribed, formulation, and mode of administration) in terms of its safety and its effectiveness. The central focus of the first edition of this book is captured by its subtitle, 'Design, Methodology, and Analysis'. Optimum quality study design and experimental research methodology must be employed if the data collected—numerical representations of biological information—are to be of optimum quality. Optimum quality data facilitate optimum quality statistical analysis and interpretation of the results obtained, which in turn permit optimum quality decisions to be made: Rational decision making is predicated on appropriate research questions and optimum quality numerical information. The book took a non-computational approach to statistics, presenting instead a conceptual framework and providing readers with a sound working knowledge of the importance of design, methodology, and analysis. Not everyone needs to be an expert in statistical analysis, but it is very helpful for work (or aspire to work) in the pharmaceutical and biologics industries to be aware of the fundamental importance of a sound scientific and clinical approach to the planning, conduct, and analysis of clinical trials.