Utilization of the Bridging Strategy for the Development of New Drugs in Oncology to Avoid Drug Lag

Global trial (GT) strategy and bridging (BG) strategy are currently the main clinical development strategies of oncology drugs in Japan, but the relationship between development style and drug lag and how the bridging strategy has contributed to the solution of drug lag have not been clear. We investigated the potential factors that influenced submission lag (SL), and also compared the differences in SL among early‐initiation BG strategy, late‐initiation BG strategy, and GT strategy. A stepwise linear regression analysis identified the potential factors that shorten SL: development start lag and development style. Comparison of the differences in SL among the strategies also indicated that the SL in the GT strategy and that in the early‐initiation BG strategy were significantly shorter than that in the late‐initiation BG strategy. The findings in our study suggest that the late‐initiation BG strategy may not contribute to shortening drug lag. Because the number of late‐initiation BG studies has not decreased, we propose first that pharmaceutical companies should initiate clinical development as early as possible in Japan so that they can choose the GT strategy as a first option at the next step, and second when they cannot choose the GT strategy after investigating differences in exposure between Japanese and non‐Japanese in a phase 1 study, they should select the early BG strategy to avoid future drug lag. It is also important for the regulatory authorities to provide reasonable guidance to have a positive impact on strategic decisions, even for foreign‐capital companies.