Drug development entails drug discovery, pre-clinical and clinical testing. New chemical entities (NCE) need to show minimum standards of safety, toxicity, pharmacokinetics and metabolism in animals (pre-clinical testing) and humans (clinical testing) and be manufactured to high quality standards before they can be placed on the market.
The drug development process is a very lengthy (up to 10 years) and costly (costs for NCEs can run into several millions of Euros) business. Only few NCEs pass all the lengthy testing and make it to the market.
To ensure marketability, drug development programs must satisfy the regulatory requirements of drug licensing authorities. The best way to ensure this is to formulate a sound regulatory strategy early on in the drug development process.