Paediatric Drug Development in China: Current Status and Future Prospects

Abstract

For more than two decades, regulatory agencies throughout the world released guidelines, rules and laws to stimulate and assist in paediatric drug development. In 2014, the National Health and Family Planning Commission (now known as the National Health Commission, NHC) and five other departments in China jointly issued 'Several Opinions on Safeguarding Medication for Children', after which several policies and regulations were issued to implement the priority review and approval of paediatric medicinal products and support the development of new drugs, including new dosage forms and strengths, for children. A total of 172 special medicinal products for children were approved from 2018 to 2022. Since 2016, the NHC, together with relevant administrative departments, has formulated and issued four paediatric drug lists containing 129 medicinal products to encourage research and development. At present, approximately 25 of these drugs (at exactly the same dosage forms and strengths as on the lists) have been approved for marketing, including antitumour drugs and immunomodulators, nervous system drugs, drugs for mental disorders and drugs for rare diseases. In this review, we analysed the regulations issued for promoting paediatric drug development in China, including the priority review and approval system, technical guidelines, data protection and financial support policies and general profiles of paediatric drug approval, clinical trials and the addition of information for children in the labels of marketed medicinal products. Finally, we discussed the challenges and possible strategies in the research and development of paediatric drugs in China.