THIS IS HOW LONG YOU SHOULD EXPECT TO WAIT FOR CIAB TO ENTER THE MARKET.
Clinical Development
Before a product may be administered to human subjects, it must undergo preclinical testing. Preclinical tests include laboratory evaluation of a product candidate's chemistry and biological activities and animal studies to assess potential safety and efficacy. The results of these studies must be submitted to the Regulatory Agencies as part of an Investigational New Drug (“IND”) application which must be reviewed by the Regulatory Agencies for safety and other considerations before clinical trials in humans can begin.
Typically, clinical trials in humans involve a three-phase process. We devote significant resources to research and development programs in an effort to discover and develop potential future product candidates. The product candidates in our pipeline are at various stages of preclinical and clinical development. The path to regulatory approval includes three phases of clinical trials in which we collect data to support an application to Regulatory Agencies to allow us to market a product for treatment of a specified disease. There are many difficulties and uncertainties inherent in research and development of new products, resulting in a high rate of failure. To bring a drug from the discovery phase to regulatory approval, and ultimately to market, takes many years and significant cost. Failure can occur at any point in the process, including after the product is approved, based on post-marketing factors. New product candidates that appear promising in development may fail to reach the market or may have only limited commercial success because of efficacy or safety concerns, inability to obtain necessary regulatory approvals, limited scope of approved uses, reimbursement challenges, difficulty or excessive costs of manufacture, alternative therapies or infringement of the patents or intellectual property rights of others. Uncertainties in the approval process of the Regulatory Agencies can result in delays in product launches and lost market opportunities. Consequently, it is very difficult to predict which products will ultimately be submitted for approval, which have the highest likelihood of obtaining approval and which will be commercially viable and generate profits. Successful results in preclinical or clinical studies may not be an accurate predictor of the ultimate safety or effectiveness of a drug or product candidate.
Phase 1 Clinical Trials: Phase 1 clinical trials begin when regulatory agencies allow initiation of clinical investigation of a new drug or product candidate. The clinical trials study a drug's safety profile and may include a preliminary determination of a drug or product candidate's safe dosage range. The Phase I clinical trial also determines how a drug is absorbed, distributed, metabolized and excreted by the body and, therefore, the potential duration of its action. Phase 1 clinical trials generally take from one to three years to complete.
Phase 2 Clinical Trials: Phase 2 clinical trials are conducted on a limited number of subjects with the targeted disease. An initial evaluation of the drug's effectiveness on subjects is performed and additional information on the drug's safety and dosage range is obtained. For many diseases, Phase 2 clinical trials normally include up to several hundred subjects and may take as many as two to three years to complete.
Phase 3 Clinical Trials: Phase 3 clinical trials are typically controlled multi-center trials that involve a larger target patient population that can consist of from several hundred to thousands of subjects to ensure that study results are statistically significant. During Phase 3 clinical trials, physicians monitor subjects to determine efficacy and to gather further information on safety. These trials are designed to generate all of the clinical data necessary to submit an application for marketing approval to regulatory agencies. Phase 3 testing varies by disease state, but can often last from two to four years or more.
Regulatory Review: If a product candidate successfully completes Phase 3 clinical trials and is submitted to governmental regulators, such as the FDA in the United States and the EMA in Europe, the time to final marketing approval can vary from six months to several years, depending on a number of variables. These variables can include such things as the disease type, the strength and complexity of the data presented, the novelty of the target or compound, risk-management approval and whether multiple rounds of review are required for the agency to evaluate the submission. There is no guarantee that a potential treatment will receive marketing approval or that decisions on marketing approvals or treatment indications will be consistent across geographic areas. In some cases, further studies beyond the three-phase clinical trial process described above are required as a condition for approval of a New Drug Application (“NDA”), a Marketing Authorization Application (“MAA”) or a Biologics License Application (“BLA”). The Regulatory Agencies require monitoring of all aspects of clinical trials and reports of all adverse events must be made. The Regulatory Agencies may also require the conduct of pediatric studies for the drug and indication either before or after submission of a NDA or a BLA.
