Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Perspective on Quality in Clinical Trials

Clinical trial quality is essential to bringing effective treatments to patients as quickly as possible. Clinical trials that answer important questions, yield meaningful data, and protect trial participants can provide data that support both regulatory and clinical decision making. The Food and Drug Administration's (FDA's) Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) encourages stakeholders to improve clinical trial quality and efficiency. CDER believes that a systematic approach to clinical trial quality-one that builds in quality up front and focuses on the most critical aspects of study conduct-contributes to successful trials. Beyond FDA's regulatory requirements for clinical trial quality, CDER is an active participant in multiple efforts to advance clinical trial quality, including the addendum to ICH E6 (Good Clinical Practice) and the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative project on quality-by-design for clinical trials. These efforts aim to move clinical drug development to a desired state that centers on efficient and agile clinical development programs that reliably produce high-quality data and adhere to important ethical standards.