Last week I gave a snapshot of the formal process undertaken by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to review a Marketing Authorisation Application (MAA) dossier under the Centralised Procedure. While this provides some context, looking at historical review timelines provides some sense of how long a future application may take. This is far from an exact science, but given the queries we have received of late on approvals timelines, I felt it appropriate to provide some internal perspective.
The EMA’s timelines are confidential, with only set time points at which companies are allowed to publish information (CHMP meetings in particular). Once a drug has been approved by the EMA, however, the Agency issues a summary of the entire review process, known as an EPAR, or European Public Assessment Report. This document outlines the timeframes required by the EMA to perform the review, along with the names of the co-rapporteurs and a summary of the product in some depth, much of which likely reflects the dossier submitted, albeit in an abbreviated version. (The EPARs are published online by the EMA and are free to download.) (more…)
For many years we’ve taken an active interest in the time required by regulatory authorities globally to approve orphan drugs. Clearly this kind of activity is required for forecasting and planning, but it also helps in communications to give our broader audience a realistic idea of the timelines ahead and some of the hurdles we may face.
Following much hype and fanfare at the Olympics, 
Since we publicly announced our 
A new article was published last week looking at a 
Take ten years, half a billion dollars and countless man hours from some of the most highly trained, intelligent individuals on the globe. You still stand a 90% chance of failure, some of which is totally out of your control. This is the apparent reality of modern drug development.
Several recent stories have caught the industry’s attention and set media imaginations alight, but none moreso than last week’s record-breaking US$3B marketing settlement between pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline and the US government. In short, GSK plead guilty to withholding safety data and illegal marketing practices related to three drugs and agreed to pay US$1B in criminal fines and US$2B to resolve civil complaints with the federal and several state governments. 
