11th DIA Asia New Drug Conference in Japan

The ICH-E17 guideline “General principle on planning/designing Multi-Regional Clinical Trials” is currently under consideration. This guideline suggests pooling some regions at the design stage if subjects in those regions are thought to be similar enough with respect to intrinsic and/or extrinsic factors. East Asia is expected to be effectively utilized as a pooled region given the similarities among countries. This guideline will have important implications in sample size allocation or selecting the region where the clinical study is to be conducted. In this session, speakers from PMDA and industry will present the changes that implementing this guideline will bring about, including changes in drug development strategy and specific examples of wise use of this guideline.