Trials and tribulations: a primer on successfully navigating the waters of the Food and Drug Administration.

Conducting clinical trials in a regulated environment constitutes unfamiliar territory for most physicians. There exists no formal training in this subject, so many clinicians lack even a basic understanding of the procedures required by the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and their implications vis-à-vis clinical practice. The authors distill drug regulation to relevant applications and elucidate the rationale and procedures for submitting an Investigational New Drug application by providing a user-friendly road map of the process.