In the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, the FDA

Food and Drug Administration

The Food and Drug Administration is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, one of the United States federal executive departments...

 approves drugs

Medication

A pharmaceutical drug, also referred to as medicine, medication or medicament, can be loosely defined as any chemical substance intended for use in the medical diagnosis, cure, treatment, or prevention of disease.- Classification :...

. Before a drug can be prescribed, it must undergo an extensive FDA approval process. This process involves first testing the drug on animals or in medical labs. If found to be safe by the FDA and approved for the next phase of study, the drug is then tested for safety and effectiveness in humans (clinical trial

Clinical trial

Clinical trials are a set of procedures in medical research and drug development that are conducted to allow safety and efficacy data to be collected for health interventions...

s). The drug manufacturer then files a New Drug Application

New drug application

The New Drug Application is the vehicle in the United States through which drug sponsors formally propose that the Food and Drug Administration approve a new pharmaceutical for sale and marketing...

 to the FDA, which reviews the application and either approves or rejects it.

See also

• Drug discovery
  Drug discovery
  In the fields of medicine, biotechnology and pharmacology, drug discovery is the process by which drugs are discovered or designed.In the past most drugs have been discovered either by identifying the active ingredient from traditional remedies or by serendipitous discovery...
  
  
• Drug design
  Drug design
  Drug design, also sometimes referred to as rational drug design or structure-based drug design, is the inventive process of finding new medications based on the knowledge of the biological target...
  
  
• Drug development
  Drug development
  Drug development is a blanket term used to define the process of bringing a new drug to the market once a lead compound has been identified through the process of drug discovery...
  
  
• Abbreviated New Drug Application
• Patent medicine
  Patent medicine
  Patent medicine refers to medical compounds of questionable effectiveness sold under a variety of names and labels. The term "patent medicine" is somewhat of a misnomer because, in most cases, although many of the products were trademarked, they were never patented...
  
  
• Dietary supplement
  Dietary supplement
  A dietary supplement, also known as food supplement or nutritional supplement, is a preparation intended to supplement the diet and provide nutrients, such as vitamins, minerals, fiber, fatty acids, or amino acids, that may be missing or may not be consumed in sufficient quantities in a person's diet...
  
  
• Folk remedy
• Homeopathy
  Homeopathy
  Homeopathy is a form of alternative medicine in which practitioners claim to treat patients using highly diluted preparations that are believed to cause healthy people to exhibit symptoms that are similar to those exhibited by the patient...
  
  
• Herbology

External links

• ClinicalTrials.gov from US National Library of Medicine
• ICH Website
• FDA Website