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Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) is a set of rules for medicines manufacturers to follow so that their products are safe, effective, and of good quality. The rules may be written into law or set out in guidance documents from regulatory authorities. Regulators will not allow medicinal products to be placed, or to remain, on the market in their country unless the products can be shown to be manufactured in compliance with GMP. To this end, they carry out inspections of manufacturing plants. Companies that persistently commit serious breaches of GMP requirements have suffered huge fines.

The Centralised Procedure (CP) is one of three routes available to applicants to gain multinational marketing authorisation within the European Economic Area (EEA) on the basis of a single application. In the CP, one successful application leads to a marketing authorisation being issued by the European Commission that applies throughout the EEA. The CP is mandatory for certain types of products.

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.

Medicines for the prevention, diagnosis, or treatment of rare diseases have become known as ‘orphan drugs’ because of their commercial unattractiveness. Development of such products is successfully encouraged through incentives offered by regulatory authorities. To qualify for important incentives, the sponsor of a drug must gain ‘orphan designation’ for its use in an indication. This module describes the requirements for orphan designation and how to apply for it in the USA and the European Economic Area.

21CFR11 applies to records that are required to be submitted to the FDA, or that are subject to FDA inspection, and that are in electronic form – that is, as computer files. It applies to all computer systems used to create, modify, maintain, archive, retrieve, or transmit such records – from a humble spreadsheet program to a complex information management system.

This module provides a guide to signal detection and management for approved products. The subject is presented as a process comprising four stages: signal detection, signal validation, signal analysis and prioritisation, and risk assessment and minimisation.

This module addresses characteristic issues influencing the registration of medicinal products based on monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), for use in humans. Regulatory requirements for the registration of biological medicinal products such as those based on mAbs differ in certain respects from those for small-molecule products. This is because of the distinct characteristics of biologics, such as complex structure and susceptibility to variation during manufacture.

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.

The CTD is the internationally recognised standard format for submissions to medicines regulatory authorities. In the European Economic Area, the USA and Canada, the CTD, in its electronic format (eCTD), is mandatory for all applications for marketing approval and all subsequent related submissions. The CTD is accepted in many other countries, being mandatory for new prescription medicines in some. This module explains the rationale for the CTD and provides guidance on its structure and format and the ways in which it is used.