Research Triangle Center of Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation - ABSTRACT The rapid emergence of innovative technologies, therapeutics, and other FDA-regulated products have outpaced the ability to effectively appropriate them for public benefit. Doing so hinges on the capability to expeditiously evaluate these products and effectively monitor them once on the market. However, methodologies for pre- market evaluation through laboratory testing and clinical trials for drugs, devices, and biologics and for post- marketing surveillance of all FDA-regulated products have not kept pace, and key gaps in knowledge exist that would inform regulatory decision making in many areas. In the face of these pressing needs, the Research Triangle Center of Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation (Triangle CERSI) will provide a one-stop- shop accelerator to meet FDA’s current and evolving needs in regulatory science and a generative community for regulators, academia, industry, and other stakeholders. A collaboration of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University, North Carolina State University, and North Carolina Central University, all in close proximity, the Triangle CERSI represents a broad network of investigators and national and international collaborators that bring unique and diverse expertise and resources for regulatory science, including but not limited to novel approaches in statistical methodologies, machine learning and artificial intelligence, imaging, in silico trials, pediatric pharmacology, patient reported outcomes (PRO), population science, and safety assessment across the lifespan, and other areas. The Triangle CERSI includes two Schools of Medicine, a School of Pharmacy, two Schools of Nursing, a School of Public Health, a College of Veterinary Medicine, a leading historically Black university, a national Center for Virtual Imaging Trials, and the Duke Clinical Research Institute, and leverages relationships with nearby companies and organizations in the Research Triangle Park. The Triangle CERSI has three specific aims: 1. Conduct regulatory science projects in collaboration with FDA to deliver major advances in regulatory science and rapidly address a broad range of major, specific, and emerging challenges in response to FDA needs. 2. Establish robust CERSI Core infrastructure to develop, propose, support, enable, and monitor execution of CERSI research projects to facilitate rapid achievement of project deliverables; partner Oak Ridge National Laboratory provides support for data access, computation, and resource sharing. 3. Expand support of the Triangle CERSI and extend its impact through regulatory science information sharing activities, including efforts to diversify the regulatory science workforce. The Triangle CERSI will actively share results and newly developed tools and resources with the FDA, research community, stakeholders, and our institutions’ students and trainees. Together, our overarching goal is to provide an abundance of essential new information, infrastructure, and tools to shorten the drug and device development process, to advance public health, and to inform FDA activities in ways that complement other CERSIs and contribute to achieving the goals of the national CERSI program.
