Janet Woodcock’s recent quote on the state of pharmaceutical development — “It’s not working…” — should not be a surprise to anyone. The industry has been struggling for years with long development times, high product failure rates, and frequent quality problems. But, Ms. Woodcock’s further statement — “and, it won’t work in the future” — is an especially troubling call for changes.
Are the methods used for developing the current generation of biopharmaceuticals, monoclonal antibodies, hormone replacements, etc., applicable to the next generation of Cellular and gene therapies?
How can pharma product quality improve? The first tactic could be to increase the frequency of vendor inspections, using internal quality control programs to inspect suppliers to assure compliance.
