David Shoemaker, PhD, Senior Vice President R&D, has extensive experience in the preparation and filing of all types of regulatory submissions including primary responsibility for four BLAs and three NDAs.  He has managed or contributed to more than two dozen NDAs, BLAs, and MAAs and has moderated dozens of regulatory authority meetings.

Jack Modell, MD, Vice President and Senior Medical Officer, is a board-certified psychiatrist with 30 years of experience in clinical research, teaching, and patient care including 10 years of experience in clinical drug development (phases 2 through 4) and successful NDA filings. Dr. Modell is a key opinion leader nationally known for leading the first successful development of preventative pharmacotherapy for the depressive episodes of seasonal affective disorder.

Scott Burian, PhD, Senior Research Scientist, has contributed to the development of a diverse range of small molecule, biologic, and nanoparticle-based products.  He has participated in numerous FDA interactions, including pre-IND meetings, Type A meetings, and Advisory Committee meetings. He is fully-versed in eCTD format and has authored a variety of CMC submissions, including numerous pre-IND meeting packages, INDs, NDAs, and IMPDs.

Here at Rho, we’ve helped many companies with their marketing application submissions. In fact, in the past six years, we’ve been a key service provider on 14 submissions, provided biostatistics support for 30 submissions, and prepared over 20 Integrated Summary of Safety (ISS) and Integrated Summary of Efficacy (ISE) SAPs. Over the course of working on these submissions, one common hurdle we see is that Sponsor companies often enter this stage without a strong understanding of what data they have and how that maps to a viable approval pathway.

Whether you plan to file a new drug application (NDA), a biologics license application (BLA), or a premarket approval application (PMA) with the FDA or a marketing authorization application (MAA) with the European Medicines Agency, you’ll need an in depth understanding of how the data you have from your clinical studies, nonclinical studies, and Chemistry, Manufacturing and Controls (CMC) / Quality development map to the requirements of the application. These requirements can be specific to the therapeutic area or regulatory authority, and are continually changing as science advances.

Discovering you don’t have all the data you need as you begin preparing your marketing application can lead to costly time delays. What can be done? We recommend undertaking a gap analysis following proof-of-concept in Phase II. This timing allows you to design your adequate and well-controlled studies to attain all necessary clinical data. Performing the gap analysis at this stage of development will also provide enough time to conduct additional nonclinical studies or CMC development that may be needed to support the application.

You need a cross-functional team of medical, regulatory, clinical, statistical, CMC, and toxicology experts with experience getting a product to market, ideally in the therapeutic area of interest. Many small to mid-size companies don’t have all of this expertise in-house, so the team will need to bring in outside support in the form of consultants or a contract research organization (CRO) that has this expertise.

A gap analysis starts with a detailed look at the existing data and regulatory communications. What is the format of the data? Anything you plan to submit will need to be in CDISC format, so if you need data from legacy studies, the data must be converted to CDISC format if the study was initiated after December 2016. Next, look at the label claims you plan to make. Do you have (or have a plan to collect) all the data needed to support those claims? This can be difficult to determine.

Once you’ve determined the data you have and the data you’ll need, create a map that clearly identifies the deficiencies in your database. You may find that there are very few gaps and the data you’ve collected and will collect in your pivotal studies will adequately support your marketing application. You may also realize that you don’t need all of the data from your legacy studies, which can save you some time and money in CDISC conversion costs. Conversely, you may identify significant gaps in your database that require additional studies. That is still a good outcome because by performing the gap analysis you have clearly identified what needs to be completed and you will have sufficient time to gather the additional data. This could mean just completing your Phase 3 studies, or performing additional clinical (e.g. food effect studies) or nonclinical studies, or CMC development work, thus ensuring that upon completion of the Phase III studies, you will have a clear path to your marketing application submission.

So, is the additional time and expense of conducting a gap analysis worth it? Rho believes that the answer is most definitely, yes. However, we typically recommend waiting until proof-of concept has been demonstrated to conduct this analysis. At that point, you should have convinced yourself that you have a viable product and have a general idea of its characteristics and potential value to patients. An experienced team of medical, nonclinical, CMC, regulatory, and statistical experts can conduct a gap analysis relatively quickly and for a relatively limited cost. When compared to a significant delay between the end of Phase 3 and submission or an unsuccessful marketing application submission, it is almost certainly worth it.