128 Courses delivered Online

In this course we explain how to advertise and promote prescription drugs in various media, whether to healthcare professionals or consumers, in compliance with legal requirements and guidance from the FDA.

This course sets out the legal and regulatory requirements for safety reporting in clinical trials of medicinal products under the jurisdictions of the European Union and the USA. It builds on the foundation laid by our companion course CT13, Safety Reporting in Clinical Trials, and provides greater detail of specific requirements in those jurisdictions.

This course explains the regulatory requirements for the reporting of adverse events and suspected adverse reactions in clinical trials. It describes how investigators should report to sponsors, and how sponsors should report to regulatory authorities and other stakeholders in the safety of investigational products. It explains how events are characterized as serious or non-serious, expected or unexpected, and it distinguishes the requirements for each category. It describes controlled vocabularies used for coding of events in reports.

This course sets out the procedures that sponsors need to follow to gain authorisation to conduct clinical trials under the Regulation, and it summarises and links to the extensive guidance available from the European Commission and the European Medicines Agency. Its companion course CT12 sets out the procedures that sponsors need to follow to conduct authorised clinical trials in compliance with the Regulation. The two courses therefore provide an ideal foundation for understanding and complying with the new law.

In this course we set out the legal framework for the regulation of advertising and promotion of prescription drugs in the USA. We identify the regulatory authorities and sources of guidance. We summarize basic requirements that advertisements and promotional labeling must meet, and we identify consequences that may follow failure to comply.

Unlike the great majority of other countries, the advertising of prescription drugs directly to consumers is permitted in the USA. Spending by drug companies on direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs has increased more than four-fold over two decades, with a dramatic increase in the number of TV ads. In addition, the Internet and social media platforms have increasingly enabled companies to engage more actively with the public.

The purpose of GLP is to provide assurance of the quality and reliability of nonclinical study data. GLP covers the planning, performance, monitoring, recording and reporting of studies. Regulatory authorities typically require GLP rules to be followed for nonclinical studies intended to support an application for approval of clinical research or marketing of a product containing the test item. This course outlines the history of GLP and explains why it is important, identifies the penalties that may be incurred for noncompliance, and sets out requirements that need to be met. Learners are also referred to the two main sources of GLP rules: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Principles on Good Laboratory Practice and US Regulation 21 CFR 58: Good Laboratory Practice for Nonclinical Laboratory Studies.

Pharmacokinetic (PK) and pharmacodynamic (PD) studies provide a bridge between science and medicine in the development of a drug. In this module we describe the role of in-vivo PK and PD studies in a drug development programme, set out the uses to which the findings can be put, and discuss their implications for clinical development and application for marketing approval.

The sponsor of a clinical trial needs to reach agreement with clinical investigators to conduct the trial. The suitability of investigators and their institutional sites, typically hospitals, has to be evaluated, and the trial has to be set up at each site. This module describes the processes involved, focusing particularly on the role of a Clinical Research Associate (CRA) employed or contracted by the sponsor to monitor the trial.

This module provides an understanding of how clinical trials fit into the drug development process. It outlines the key historical events leading to the development of controlled clinical trials. It specifies the purpose of trials, outlines their features, and identifies codes and regulations that apply to them. Finally, it describes the environment of cost control in which the modern pharmaceutical industry operates.