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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 14017

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

 

Publication type: Journal Article

Robinson S, Delongeas JL, Donald E, Dreher D, Festag M, Kervyn S, Lampo A, Nahas K, Nogues V, Ockert D, Quinn K, Old S, Pickersgill N, Somers K, Stark C, Stei P, Waterson L, Chapman K.
A European pharmaceutical company initiative challenging the regulatory requirement for acute toxicity studies in pharmaceutical drug development.
Regul Toxicol Pharmacol 2008 Apr; 50:(3):345-52
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WPT-4R8WK2M-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=c02db5bf494f34c077a7211a843b1ffb


Abstract:

Regulatory guidelines indicate acute toxicity studies in animals are considered necessary for pharmaceuticals intended for human use. This is the only study type where lethality is mentioned as an endpoint. The studies are carried out, usually in rodents, to support marketing of new drugs and to identify the minimum lethal dose. A European initiative including 18 companies has undertaken an evidence-based review of acute toxicity studies and assessed the value of the data generated. Preclinical and clinical information was shared on 74 compounds. The analysis indicated acute toxicity data was not used to (i) terminate drugs from development (ii) support dose selection for repeat dose studies in animals or (iii) to set doses in the first clinical trials in humans. The conclusion of the working group is that acute toxicity studies are not needed prior to first clinical trials in humans. Instead, information can be obtained from other studies, which are performed at more relevant doses for humans and are already an integral part of drug development. The conclusions have been discussed and agreed with representatives of regulatory bodies from the US, Japan and Europe.

sally.robinson@astrazeneca.com

Keywords:
MeSH Terms: Animals Clinical Trials as Topic Computer Communication Networks Data Collection Dose-Response Relationship, Drug Drug Industry/standards* European Union Humans Legislation, Drug/standards* Overdose Pharmaceutical Preparations/standards* Research Design Toxicity Tests/standards* Substances: Pharmaceutical Preparations


Notes:

First available online 5 December 2007.

 

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Far too large a section of the treatment of disease is to-day controlled by the big manufacturing pharmacists, who have enslaved us in a plausible pseudo-science...
The blind faith which some men have in medicines illustrates too often the greatest of all human capacities - the capacity for self deception...
Some one will say, Is this all your science has to tell us? Is this the outcome of decades of good clinical work, of patient study of the disease, of anxious trial in such good faith of so many drugs? Give us back the childlike trust of the fathers in antimony and in the lancet rather than this cold nihilism. Not at all! Let us accept the truth, however unpleasant it may be, and with the death rate staring us in the face, let us not be deceived with vain fancies...
we need a stern, iconoclastic spirit which leads, not to nihilism, but to an active skepticism - not the passive skepticism, born of despair, but the active skepticism born of a knowledge that recognizes its limitations and knows full well that only in this attitude of mind can true progress be made.
- William Osler 1909