Design and analysis of bridging studies

Chin-Fu Hsiao, Jen-pei Liu, Shein-Chung Chow

"In recent years, the variations of pharmaceutical products in efficacy and safety among different geographic regions due to ethic factors is a matter of great concern for sponsors as well as for regulatory authorities. However, the key issues lie on when and how to address the geographic variations of efficacy and safety for the product development. To address this issue, a general framework has been provided by the ICH E5 (1998) in a document titled "Ethnic Factors in the Acceptability of Foreign Clinical Data" for evaluation of the impact of ethnic factors on the efficacy, safety, dosage, and dose regimen. The ICH E5 guideline provides regulatory strategies for minimizing duplication of clinical data and requirements for bridging evidence to extrapolate foreign clinical data to a new region. More specifically, the ICH E5 guideline suggests that a bridging study should be conducted...