Safety Efforts in Pediatric Drug Development

This book focuses on the safety efforts being implemented in paediatric drug development. Although children suffer from many of the same diseases as adults and are often treated with the same drugs, only about one-third of the drugs that are prescribed for children have been studied and labelled for paediatric use. This has placed children taking drugs for which there have not been adequate paediatric drug studies at risk of being exposed to ineffective treatment or receiving incorrect dosing. In order to encourage the study of more drugs for paediatric use, Congress passed the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act (BPCA) in 2002 to provide marketing incentives to drug manufacturers for conducting paediatric drug studies. Drug manufacturers may obtain six months of additional market exclusivity for drugs on which they have conducted paediatric studies in accordance with pertinent law and regulations. This book also evaluates the impact of BPCA on labelling drugs for paediatric use and the process by which the labelling was changed, and illustrates the range of diseases treated by the drugs studied under BPCA. Additionally this book provides guidance on the role and timing of animal studies in the non-clinical safety evaluation of therapeutics intended for the treatment of paediatric patients. The guidance discusses some conditions under which juvenile animals can be meaningful predictors of toxicity in paediatric patients and makes recommendations on non-clinical testing. This book consists of public documents which have been located, gathered, combined, reformatted, and enhanced with a subject index, selectively edited and bound to provide easy access.