Our product candidates will require regulatory approvals prior to sale. In particular, therapeutic agents are subject to stringent approval processes, prior to commercial marketing, by the FDA and by comparable agencies in most foreign countries. The process of obtaining FDA and corresponding foreign approvals is costly and time-consuming, and we cannot assure you that such approvals will be granted. Also, the regulations we are subject to change frequently and such changes could cause delays in the development of our product candidates.
Three of our drug candidates are currently in the clinical development stage, and we cannot be certain that we, or our partners, will successfully complete the clinical trials necessary to receive regulatory product approvals. The regulatory approval process is lengthy, unpredictable and expensive. To obtain regulatory approvals in the United States, we or a partner must ultimately demonstrate to the satisfaction of the FDA that our product candidates are sufficiently safe and effective for their proposed administration to humans. Many factors, known and unknown, can adversely impact clinical trials and the ability to evaluate a product candidate's safety and efficacy, including:
- the FDA or other health regulatory authorities, or institutional review boards, or IRBs, do not approve a clinical trial protocol or place a clinical trial on hold;- suitable patients do not enroll in a clinical trial in sufficient numbers or at the expected rate, for reasons such as the size of the patient population, the proximity of patients to clinical sites, the eligibility criteria for the trial, the perceptions of investigators and patients regarding safety, and the availability of other treatment options;- clinical trial data is adversely affected by trial conduct or patient withdrawal prior to completion of the trial;- there may be competition with ongoing clinical trials and scheduling conflicts with participating clinicians;- patients experience serious adverse events, including adverse side effects of our drug candidates, for a variety of reasons that may or may not be related to our product candidates, including the advanced stage of their disease and other medical problems;- patients in the placebo or untreated control group exhibit greater than expected improvements or fewer than expected adverse events;- third-party clinical investigators do not perform the clinical trials on the anticipated schedule or consistent with the clinical trial protocol and good clinical practices, or other third-party organizations do not perform data collection and analysis in a timely or accurate manner;- service providers, collaborators or co-sponsors do not adequately perform their obligations in relation to the clinical trial or cause the trial to be delayed or terminated;- we are unable to obtain a sufficient supply of manufactured clinical trial materials;- regulatory inspections of manufacturing facilities, which may, among other things, require us or a co-sponsor to undertake corrective action or suspend the clinical trials, such as the clinical hold with respect to our Phase 2 clinical trial of RGN-352;- the interim results of the clinical trial are inconclusive or negative;- the clinical trial, although approved and completed, generates data that is not considered by the FDA or others to be clinically relevant or sufficient to demonstrate safety and efficacy; and - changes in governmental regulations or administrative actions affect the conduct of the clinical trial or the interpretation of its results.
There can be no assurance that our, or our partners', clinical trials will in fact demonstrate, to the satisfaction of the FDA and others, that our product candidates are sufficiently safe or effective. The FDA or we may also restrict or suspend our clinical trials at any time if it is believed that subjects participating in the trials are being exposed to unacceptable health risks.
Clinical trials for product candidates such as ours are often conducted with patients who have more advanced forms of a particular condition or other unrelated conditions. For example, in clinical trials for our product candidate RGN-137, we have studied patients who are not only suffering from chronic epidermal wounds but who are also older and much more likely to have other serious adverse conditions. During the course of treatment with our product candidates, patients could die or suffer other adverse events for reasons that may or may not be related to the drug candidate being tested. Further, and as a consequence that all of our drug candidates are based on Tß4, crossover risk exists such that a patient in one trial may be adversely impacted by one drug candidate, and that adverse event may have implications for our other trials and other drug candidates. However, even if unrelated to our product candidates, such adverse events can nevertheless negatively impact our clinical trials, and our business prospects would suffer.
These factors, many of which may be outside of our control, may have a negative impact on our business by making it difficult to advance product candidates or by reducing or eliminating their potential or perceived value. As a consequence, we may need to perform more or larger clinical trials than planned. Further, if we are forced to contribute greater financial and clinical resources to a study, valuable resources will be diverted from other areas of our business. If we fail to complete or if we experience material delays in completing our clinical trials as currently planned, or we otherwise fail to commence or complete, or experience delays in, any of our other present or planned clinical trials, including as a result of the actions of third parties upon which we rely for these functions, our ability to conduct our business as currently planned could materially suffer.