With just 10% of therapeutic programs successfully moving from first toxicity dose to market, drug developers are on a constant hunt for new tricks to put the odds in their favor. Strategies abound, from biomarker-guided patient selection to deeper regulatory engagement. But big pharma executives and an academic expert weighing the challenge at the BIO International Convention said June 14 they see another tool slowly gaining traction with the potential to decrease timelines and boost chances for approval: in-silico modeling.
U.S. FDA Commissioner Robert Califf offered the keynote address at this year’s annual meeting of the Food and Drug Law Institute (FDLI), revisiting recent events that have roiled the agency’s staff and reputation. Califf made a point of emphasizing the need for new statutory authorities in connection with the supply chains for FDA-regulated products, and remarked that his return to the agency will not be a reversion to the norm in this context.
A lot of eyes are on the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference taking place in Geneva June 12-15, as member countries try to reach a consensus on a proposal that would allow certain members to waive intellectual property (IP) rights on COVID-19 vaccines for at least three to five years.