The four-part IPQ story in this issue explores the current dialogue on the drivers and pathways for a more collaborative, streamlined and globally-minded regulatory approach to medicine/device combination products in Europe and the activity in progress to reach that goal. In focus in the four parts are: ● the EU Pharma Strategy roadmap, comments from industry, and related agency strategies ● culture/structure/process change and global alignment ● HPRA CEO Lorraine Nolan on HPRA and EMA strategy, and ● EMA’s Zaïde Frias and NB/industry perspectives on EU regulatory transformation.
The pressing need during the COVID-19 pandemic to accelerate product development and rapidly accommodate the shifting manufacturing and distribution demands has shed strong light on the constraints in the existing quality regulatory framework and the pathways to reducing them. The two-part feature story in this issue explores how the ICH Q8-12 efforts to evolve the lifecycle regulatory paradigm to be more transparent, internally coherent, knowledge and risk based, continuous improvement and supply friendly, and globally consistent have not yet been realized, and where the deeper solutions to the problems may lie.
The feature story in the April issue explores how regulators and industry are working together to make quality risk management (QRM) a more effective force in improving quality systems and the regulatory communication process at the review and inspections levels. The three parts of the story provide insights from: ● HPRA’S Kevin O’Donnell on the evolution of QRM and the revision now underway of ICH’s 15-year-old QRM guideline Q9, which he is leading ● FDA’s Rick Friedman, also on the Q9 revision Expert Working Group, on advancing aseptic processes through QRM, and ● industry/academia thought leaders on evolving QRM’s relationship with knowledge management across the product lifecycle.
The March issue provides a wealth of insights shared by FDA, EMA and PMDA biotherapeutic and vaccine regulators on the challenges, opportunities, and learnings as they have sought to support the accelerated product development and review called for by the pandemic, while assuring that CMC/quality standards are met and keeping up with their non-COVID-related workload. Included are updates on the guidances and other quality-related initiatives impacting vaccines and biotherapeutics that have been forthcoming during the first quarter of 2021.
The issue focuses on how academia and industry are collaborating to address the pressing needs in biopharma workforce development, in recognition of the challenges of keeping pace with the rapidly evolving process and product technologies and the cross-functional understanding and skills needed to support them. The six-part coverage explores the dimensions of these challenges and the collaborations that are being formed and strengthened to address them.
Drawing attention in the January issue are: ● how the research, technologies and partnerships that have been gelling in recent years made possible the rapid development of a coronavirus vaccine in 2020 ● how USP has intensified its focus on supply chain vulnerabilities and vaccine/treatment development to help support the pandemic response, and ● FDA’s ongoing progress in improving the usefulness and user-friendliness of its inactive ingredient database (IID).
IPQ’s attention during November and December remained centered on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In focus in the two stories in the issue are: ● insights from European experts on the myriad of complex issues that have to be addressed in getting the vaccines from manufacturers into the arms of the billions of people around the world that will need to receive them, and ● how the internal operations and external communication processes among pharmacopeias, industry and regulators are being adapted and collaboration expanded.
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic remained central to IPQ’s coverage during September and October. The three stories in this issue focus on: ● the insights from CBER Director Peter Marks on the difficult terrain that regulators have to navigate with industry to reach the goal of getting effective vaccines and therapies for COVID-19 available as efficiently as possible ● USP’s global collaborative efforts to strengthen the standards and accelerate innovation in the biologics arena, and ● the attention FDA is putting on risk management plans (RMPs) to help in the drug shortage prevention and mitigation part of the pandemic response.
