Let’s Be Friends In Regulation
There’s a lot of activity between the EMA and the FDA at the moment. Recently, reports have been published following two international pilot programmes regarding API inspections and good clinical practices (GCP). The outcome of the pilots? Success!
Alleviating API inspection fatigue
The first pilot involved the EMA, the national regulatory agencies of several EU member states, the FDA and Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), and concerned joint GMP inspections of API manufacturers. Such inspections have been a hot topic in the industry for some time because they offer the two-fold benefit of increasing the total number of sites inspected and reducing duplicate inspections for manufacturers. According to the final report on the programme, participants shared their surveillance lists and identified 97 sites common to all three regions, resulting in the exchange of nearly 100 inspection reports and 9 joint inspections. The pilot ran from December 2008 until December 2010 and, according to the report, collaboration in this area will continue and expand—initially to other European authorities.
“The increased cooperation established as a result of the pilot programme increased information sharing between the regulators concerned and facilitates work sharing,” explained the final report on the programme. “It also promoted more efficient use of international inspectional resources combined with wider global inspectional coverage to the benefit of public health and patients worldwide.”
The FDA also touted the success of the initiative in a press statement; for instance, the FDA prohibited imports into the US of a firm’s products based on the negative findings from a European inspection. “The information-sharing and collaborative inspections were important milestones in establishing a sense of mutual trust and common purpose among the drug regulatory agencies involved,” said the FDA in its statement.
Improving GCP
The second pilot involved the EMA and the FDA, and was launched in September 2009 with the objective of sharing inspections information and GCP-related documents, and conducting joint inspections. As with the above pilot, the programme has been very productive. The agencies exchanged more than 250 documents relating to 54 different medicines and organised 13 joint inspections.
The final report said: “A considerable amount of information has been exchanged, and this communication has facilitated improvements in the agencies’ inspection coverage and decision-making processes. The thirteen collaborative inspections conducted under this initiative have contributed greatly to each agency’s understanding of the other’s inspection procedures; they have also led to the identification of potential improvements to these procedures.”
The agencies have said that the initiative will continue and that they will incorporate the lessons learned during the pilot. In a statement, the EMA said that the pilot “demonstrates how the agencies can work together to improve the protection of participants in clinical trials and better ensure the integrity of data submitted as the basis for drug approvals.”
Working out the bumps
But it’s not all going to be smooth sailing from now on. The collaboration is, of course, still in its early days and there are some bugbears that need to be worked out. For example, during the API inspection pilot, particularly in 2009, the report notes that a number of duplicate inspections occurred due to issues related to the ‘Master List’ of API sites, such as out-of-date information. Tools that enable the real-time sharing of data, however, may be able to assist in this area. Another challenge identified was the organisation of joint inspections; several inspections were cancelled because of the absence of effective advance planning and logistical issues. As a recommendation, the reports said that the planning of joint inspections should commence as early as possible.
Overall, the reactions from the agencies involved has been positive, with the FDA describing the pilots in a press statement as “important stepping stones toward further global regulatory collaboration”.
Moving forward, however, caution has been expressed about opening the project wider at this early point because of the added complexity. For now, the collaboration will continue in the existing format and will be extended to all the member states of the European Economic Area. As the bumps in the road are gradually smoothed, however, perhaps there will be input from additional parties. The report said: “Nevertheless, it is recognised that extending the programme to more comparable regulatory authorities and possibly the World Health Organisation would certainly need to be considered as a long-term goal, as an efficient worldwide programme of inspections of APIs would be a notable benefit for public health globally.”
The final reports can be downloaded from either the EMA or FDA websites. If you’re looking for some extra reading to get you through Friday, then you can also have a look at these related PharmTech articles:
This collaboration is a good initiative, should have been done sooner.
For GMP, bringing PICS members on board would rapidly increase coverage.
Perhaps we need something like PICS for GCP?