For Consumers
Speeding Access to Important New Therapies
Shortening Time to Approval
Speeding the development and availability of drugs that treat serious diseases are in everyone's interest, especially when the drugs are the first available treatment or have advantages over existing treatments. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has developed three distinct and successful approaches to making such drugs available as rapidly as possible: Priority Review, Accelerated Approval, and Fast Track. Because each of these approaches implies speed, there can be confusion about the specific meaning of each and the distinctions among them.
Fast Track, Accelerated Approval, and Priority Review. A brief overview of the major three regulatory approaches to expediting drug approval.
Critical Path. The Critical Path Initiative is FDA's effort to stimulate and facilitate a national effort to modernize the scientific process through which a potential human drug, biological product, or medical device is transformed from a discovery or "proof of concept" into a medical product.
Use of Investigational Agents Prior to Marketing Approval
Access Outside of Clinical Trials
FDA allows access to investigational drugs, in certain circumstances, for patients with serious or immediately life-threatening diseases or conditions who lack other therapeutic options and may benefit from such therapies. It is not always possible for all patients who want access to investigational drugs to enroll in clinical trials. Patients may not meet eligibility criteria or may be geographically isolated from a study site. In these situations, FDA believes that it is appropriate to help make certain promising, but as yet unproven, products available outside of a clinical trial (treatment use of an investigational drug) to patients with serious and life-threatening illnesses. Treatment use of an investigational drug should be offered in a way that does not pose an unreasonable risk to the patient or an unreasonable risk of losing valuable information about the effect of the drug. For these reasons, although treatment is focused on the individual patient, a study plan (protocol) may be written to ensure that the treatment is administered appropriately and that patients are monitored for toxicity.
It is important to note that a pharmaceutical manufacturer must first agree to provide the requested product for treatment use of an investigational drug to begin. FDA cannot mandate that the requested products be supplied to these programs; the agency can only review and authorize proposals to use them.
