RESOURCE LIBRARY

This guidance provides assistance to sponsors of investigational new drug applications (INDs), new drug applications (NDAs), abbreviated new drug applications (ANDAs), and supplements in developing bioanalytical method validation information used in human clinical pharmacology, bioavailability (BA), and bioequivalence (BE) studies requiring pharmacokinetic (PK) evaluation. This guidance also applies to bioanalytical methods used for non-human pharmacology/toxicology studies and preclinical studies. For studies related to the veterinary drug approval process, this guidance applies only to blood and urine BA, BE, and PK studies.  The information in this guidance generally applies to bioanalytical procedures such as gas chromatography (GC), high-pressure liquid chromatography (LC), combined GC and LC mass spectrometric (MS) procedures such as LC-MS, LC-MS-MS, GC-MS, and GC-MS-MS performed for the quantitative determination of drugs and/or metabolites in biological matrices such as blood, serum, plasma, or urine. This guidance also applies to other bioanalytical methods, such as immunological and microbiological procedures, and to other biological matrices, such as tissue and skin samples.

The eCTD is defined as an interface for industry to agency transfer of regulatory information while at the same time taking into consideration the facilitation of the creation, review, lifecycle management and archival of the electronic submission. The eCTD specification lists the criteria that will make an electronic submission technically valid. The focus of the specification is to provide the ability to transfer the registration application electronically from industry to a regulatory authority. Industry to industry and agency to agency transfer is not addressed. The specification is divided into a series of main sections followed by a number of appendices in which detailed, technical specifications are given.