Introduction Throughout history, humans have had a complex relationship with psychedelics. For millennia, ancient indigenous cultures used them for spiritual and healing purposes. For example, in 2007, archaeologists in Spain discovered mushrooms found at a burial site dated more than 7,000 years old. The mushrooms found at the site were identified as psilocybin, a type…
Historic Regulatory Decision for First FDA-Approved Gene Therapy for DMD On June 22, 2023, in a-much anticipated decision, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval for Elevidys (also known as SRP-9001), Sarepta’s one-time gene therapy for ambulatory children with Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy (DMD). However, the accelerated approval was limited to the…
Within clinical trials, exploratory or post-hoc subgroup analyses are widely recognized as only “hypothesis generating” due to their high potential for bias and/or misleading interpretation. This is the main reason why Sponsors cannot make efficacy claims or seek regulatory approval based on evidence of efficacy in a certain subgroup unless that benefit is consistent with…
CRISPR is a powerful gene-editing tool that enables targeted therapeutic gene editing, with clinical applications for improving treatment of inherited and/or rare genetic diseases, viral infections, and arresting the progression of cancer. CRISPR gene-editing technology has the potential to revolutionize the treatment of rare genetic disorders, with the first product poised for FDA approval in…
The accelerated approval (AA) pathway was introduced in 1992 (in response to the AIDS epidemic) to shorten the FDA approval process for drugs to treat serious or life-threatening diseases or rare diseases where there is a high unmet medical need. AA allows for drugs to be approved on the basis of surrogate endpoints that are…
Surrogate endpoints have been used for accelerated approval (AA) since the early 1990s, playing a vital role in getting therapies for serious conditions to patients sooner. The AA pathway was first created in 1992 to accelerate the approval of drugs intended to treat “serious conditions that fill an unmet medical need.” In the intervening 30+…
