Background: In Australia, facilitated regulatory pathways (FRPs) became available with the introduction of priority review (PR) in 2017 and provisional approval (PA) in 2018, which aim to facilitate expedited review and approval for novel medicines. The pathways were developed in consultation with a wide range of stakeholders and have since been utilised by pharmaceutical companies for various therapeutic products. However, the perceptions of the firsthand users of these pathways have not been evaluated in Australia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNational Regulatory Authorities (NRAs) globally are facing the challenge of evaluating pharmaceutical products in a speedy manner, whilst simultaneously ensuring adequate efficacy, safety and quality of approved products. Additionally, common expectations include that the evaluation process is competent, flexible, commensurate with risk, efficient and rapid. In 2014, the Australian regulatory system was out of step with global regulatory developments which led to a comprehensive regulatory review and reform process.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEffective control of chemistry at interfaces is of fundamental importance for the advancement of methods of surface functionalization and patterning that are at the basis of many scientific and technological applications. A conceptually new type of interfacial chemical transformations has been discovered, confined to the contact surface between two solid materials, which may be induced by exposure to X-rays, electrons or UV light, or by the application of electrical bias. One of the reacting solids is a removable thin film coating that acts as a reagent/catalyst in the chemical modification of the solid surface on which it is applied.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIonic transport plays a central role in key technologies relevant to energy, and information processing and storage, as well as in the implementation of biological functions in living organisms. Here, we introduce a supramolecular strategy based on the non-destructive chemical patterning of a highly ordered self-assembled monolayer that allows the reproducible fabrication of ion-conducting surface patterns (ion-conducting channels) with top -COOH functional groups precisely definable over the full range of length scales from nanometre to centimetre. The transport of a single layer of selected metal ions and the electrochemical processes related to their motion may thus be confined to predefined surface paths.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA majority of viruses are composed of long single-stranded genomic RNA molecules encapsulated by protein shells with diameters of just a few tens of nanometers. We examine the extent to which these viral RNAs have evolved to be physically compact molecules to facilitate encapsulation. Measurements of equal-length viral, non-viral, coding and non-coding RNAs show viral RNAs to have among the smallest sizes in solution, i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF