Regional Comparisons

Regulators from the US, Canada, European Union, Switzerland and Japan talk about the benefits of global collaboration, and reasons why they might reach different decisions on the same drug, at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting.

EMA charges participants to receive scientific advice through the fledgling program, unlike the US FDA, which may not fit the budgets of some complex generic sponsors. At the same time, sponsors also may simply not be aware the program exists yet.

Acknowledging that it may be a barrier to some extent, EMA’s senior scientific specialist of clinical pharmacology Kevin Blake notes that EU reference medicinal products are a legal requirement for bioequivalence studies and cannot be circumvented.

While EU preparations are underway to introduce strict legal requirements for all AI systems, the UK has doubled down on its flexible, non-regulatory framework. In this second of a two-part article, a lawyer explains the pros and cons of each for pharma and medtech firms.

Flexible thinking and rigorous standards will both be needed to develop psychedelics as drug therapies in order to surmount the many complicating factors, from unique ‘set and setting’ aspects to functional unblinding, speakers at Reagan-Udall Foundation meeting agree.

While approaching the third year of its launch, the parallel advice program has seen a handful of applicants, but regulators on both sides of the Atlantic remain optimistic.

International interest in fast-track regulatory reliance and collaboration pathways such as Project Orbis and the ACCESS Consortium has grown in recent years, a trend that looks set to continue in 2024. But some policy experts have warned that faster approvals are not always better, with one academic claiming the bar for marketing authorizations has dropped “far too low.”

Sixteen cancer therapies have been granted marketing authorizations or label variations in the US this year via the Project Orbis scheme. However, the majority of these are still under review by Orbis partners, which have also been outpaced by the non-Orbis EU.

European Union reform proposals could reduce ‘clock stop’ time in drug reviews, which a new study identified as the primary driver of longer review times at the EMA compared with the US FDA.

Regulators from Canada, the UK and Australia discuss their experiences of working together under both the ACCESS Consortium, an international regulatory worksharing coalition, and Project Orbis, a parallel review process designed to speed up access to oncology medicines.

The UK joined Project Orbis in 2021 with the aim of speeding up the regulatory process for promising cancer drugs, but fewer than half of the drugs licensed under this pathway are available on the NHS in England.

The move expands access to the Pharmacopoeial Discussion Group’s quality standards to the Indian pharmaceutical industry.

The SMC, the Scottish health technology assessment body, has approved reimbursement for the first drug to win an innovation passport from the UK regulator.

Scotland’s health technology assessment body has beaten its counterpart in England to approving AbbVie’s migraine treatment Aquipta for reimbursement on the National Health System.

A report comparing the health technology assessment methods used in nine European countries, Australia and Canada found that England has the most favorable reimbursement landscape for gene therapies – but outlined several areas for improvement across the board.

The median approval time for new drugs in Switzerland lengthened in 2022, mainly because of applications filed during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, says the country’s regulator.