Critical Path Institute (C-Path) is a nonprofit, public-private partnership with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) created under the auspices of the FDA’s Critical Path Initiative program in 2005.
C-Path’s aim is to accelerate the pace and reduce the costs of medical product development through the creation of new data standards, measurement standards, and methods standards that aid in the scientific evaluation of the efficacy and safety of new therapies.
These pre-competitive standards and approaches have been termed “drug development tools” (DDTs) by the FDA, which established a process for official review and confirmation of their validity for a given context of use.
C-Path orchestrates the development of DDTs through an innovative, collaborative approach to the sharing of data and expertise. We build consensus among participating scientists from industry and academia with FDA participation and
iterative feedback. The process culminates in a formal application to FDA for official “qualification” of the DDT for a given use in product development. Qualified DDTs then become open standards for the scientific community which, in turn, may be assured both of the scientific rigor under which they were developed and of the FDA’s understanding and acceptance of their validity.
