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The Association for Human Pharmacology in the Pharmaceutical Industry (AHPPI) annual meeting focused on the changing face of early phase drug development and opened with a keynote speech concerning the revolution in pharmaceutical medicine over the last 30 years and the impact this has had on the way patients are treated. Examples were presented of how translational pharmaceutics is being used to tackle the high drug candidate failure rate and is improving productivity when moving drug candidates from the laboratory through to clinical proof of concept. The European Medicines Agency revised 2007 Risk Mitigation guideline on first in human (FIH) clinical trials was discussed. The focus of the revised guideline, which came into force in February 2018, is on risk mitigation and promotion of safety and will assist drug sponsors with the design and performance of early clinical studies. The use of integrated adaptive protocol designs in early clinical development was discussed in relation to the challenges involved when running early phase clinical trials in patients. The Health Regulatory Authority presented its strategies to ensure that following Brexit, the United Kingdom remains an attractive place to conduct Phase I clinical trials. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency confirmed that in the event of a "no deal" Brexit, it is well placed to implement and influence many provisions of the new EU CTR. The meeting provided an opportunity to discuss the changing regulatory environment and the opportunities and challenges facing the United Kingdom following Brexit with invited speakers from a range of disciplines including drug development, clinical trials and research organizations, government science policy and regulatory agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Association for Human Pharmacology in the Pharmaceutical Industry (AHPPI) annual meeting focused on impending change, innovation, and future challenges facing early phase drug development as we move into the second decade of the 21th century. The meeting opened with discussion around the technical revolution in pharmaceutical medicine over the 4 decades since the AHPPI was founded and how transformative technologies have accompanied the introduction of processes such as physiologically based pharmacokinetic modeling. During the meeting examples were presented of how in terms of the development of new therapies, the classic phases of clinical drug development are becoming a thing of the past and the lines between the phases have begun to blur, particularly in the field of oncology. The contribution that monoclonal antibodies have made to medicine and the next chapter in their design and use was also discussed. A representative of the UK's Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency discussed the increasing numbers of requests to approve complex innovative design trials, how novel trial designs are impacting on the traditional linear "phase" approach to drug development and the common pitfalls associated with them. Guidance was provided from a regulator's viewpoint on what was meant by the term "novel design" and how to submit successful trial applications for such complex trials. In an Oxford-style debate, the audience discussed the motion that "there is no longer a need to include placebo subjects in early clinical trials." The keynote speaker focused on delivering change in complex environments such as the field of drug development. The afternoon session included presentations on the challenges associated with drug product design, the complexities within non-oral dosage forms and proposed new methods of formulations for drug delivery. Presentations were also given on advances in mechanistic and computational pharmacokinetic modeling and how they have proved to be valuable tools to rationalize and facilitate the process of drug development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]