Strategies for Accelerated Drug Development: An Industry Perspective Based on an IQ Consortium Survey of CMC Considerations

Over the past decade, there has been an increase in accelerated drug development with successful regulatory approval that has provided rapid access of novel medicines to patients world-wide. This has created the opportunity for the pharmaceutical industry to continuously improve the process of quickly bringing new medicines to patients with unmet medical needs. This can be accomplished through sharing the learnings and advancements in drug development, enhancing regulatory interactions, and collaborating with academics on developing the underlying science to reduce drug development timelines. In this paper, the IQ Consortium – Accelerated Drug Development working group members intend to share recommendations for optimizing strategies that build efficiencies in accelerated pathways for regulatory approval. Information was obtained by surveying member pharmaceutical companies with respect to recent expedited submissions within the past 5 years to gain insights as to which development strategies were successful. The learnings from this analysis are provided, which includes shared learnings in formulation development, stability, analytical methods, manufacturing, and importation testing as well as regulatory considerations. Each of these sections provide a summary illustrating the key data collected as well as a discussion that is aimed to guide pharmaceutical companies on strategies to consider streamlining development activities and expedite the drug to market.