740 Manufacturing courses

Good Clinical Practice (GCP) is a set of internationally recognised ethical and scientific quality requirements for designing, conducting, recording and reporting clinical trials. Compliance with GCP principles is required by regulatory authorities in many countries for the authorisation of clinical trials and the acceptance of their data. The International Council for Harmonisation’s guideline E6, often referred to as ICH GCP, is the international standard specification for Good Clinical Practice.

An Investigational New Drug Application (IND) is a submission to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for permission to conduct a clinical trial of a medicinal product. This module describes regulatory requirements that sponsors or sponsor-investigators must meet for successful compilation, filing and maintenance of INDs. The IND and its role are defined, and the contexts in which it is required are specified.

To conduct a clinical trial in the European Economic Area under the Clinical Trials Directive the sponsor must apply for authorisation from the national competent authority (i.e. medicines regulator), and favourable opinion must be obtained from a research ethics committee, in each member state in which the trial is to take place. This module sets out the requirements for successful compilation, submission and maintenance of the applications.

Drug safety monitoring and risk management are vitally important for medicinal product developers, licence holders and clinical investigators. In addition to their duty to protect public health, increasingly tight regulation and potentially massive payments to litigants provide strong incentives for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to ensure that they maintain efficient systems for drug safety / pharmacovigilance and that all staff are aware of the basic requirements. This course will provide them with an overview of the most important aspects of this discipline, both before and after marketing of products, especially as they apply in Europe and the USA.

The New Drug Application (NDA) is the regulatory vehicle through which sponsors formally propose that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approve a new pharmaceutical for marketing and sale in the USA.

This module aims to provide you with effective strategies for the preparation and conduct of a clinical trial, while adhering to regulatory safety standards. Management of data for submission is also covered.

The eCTD is mandatory for all applications for marketing approval and all subsequent related submissions in the European Economic Area, the USA and Canada. Other countries intend to make its use mandatory. The eCTD specification has been developed to facilitate the global electronic submission, review and lifecycle management of medicinal product dossiers for regulatory applications. It broadens the scope of the CTD to include information on variations, renewals and amendments, so that it is no longer a static document but is updatable throughout the life of the product. This module outlines the eCTD specification, discusses the approach to regional differences in dossiers, and provides guidance on creation of an eCTD submission. The module provides a training and reference tool that will be of particular value to those new to the use of the format.

The module describes general principles of GCP inspection and audit, discusses preparation for an inspection, and sets out in detail what European and US FDA inspectors will examine. Finally it describes post-inspection actions by the regulator and the inspected party.

Manufacturers of medicines and healthcare products must establish, validate and maintain an equipment cleaning programme. This is a regulatory requirement because validated cleaning procedures contribute to the assurance of product purity and safety. This module provides a comprehensive account of equipment cleaning validation requirements and procedures. It follows the work of a pharmaceutical company's validation team as they establish and validate the cleaning program for a new production line.

The regulation of biological medicinal products is governed by different laws from those that apply to small-molecule synthetic drugs. Producing faithful copies of therapeutic proteins is more challenging than producing generic drugs. The US legal framework for the licensure of follow-on biologics, and accompanying regulatory guidance from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), have been established only in recent years.