The median review times for US Food and Drug Administration-approved novel agents in 2024 held very close to Prescription Drug User Fee Act goals, highlighting the fundamental predictability of the review process even as missed user fee goal dates and complete response letters have increased.
US FDA’s Median Review Time Remains Less Than One Year Despite Swell Of Missed Goal Dates
Novel agents from the biologics center had a median review time of 10.6 months, beating the drugs center's median of 11.8 months thanks to fewer multicycle and more priority reviews.

More from Pink Sheet Perspectives
Top areas for potential 2025 approvals were shaped by R&D focused on increasingly tightly targeted therapies, including the eight new candidates to join the still-burgeoning kinase inhibitor class and RNA interference, as well as many varieties of antibodies.
CBER has at least 14 and CDER another 10 novel biologics among the more than 60 candidates with a user fee goal in 2025.
Restrictions on commonly used chemicals, increased reporting requirements and enhanced environmental risk assessments are just some of the new EU sustainability and environmental rules pharmaceutical companies are potentially facing. While some measures are multi-sectoral, others are pharma specific. The Pink Sheet takes a look at some of the developments in 2024 and expectations for 2025 and beyond.
Only one-third of novel agents with 2025 goal dates come from the traditional oncology, hematology and neuroscience strongholds. Immunodermatology also is cooling, while cardiovascular drugs return to the front burner.
More from Regulatory Trackers
Stay up to date on regulatory guidelines from around the world with the Pink Sheet's Guidance Tracker. The complete Global Pharma Guidance Tracker, with sortable and searchable listings going back to 2014, is available online.
This is an update of recommendations from the European Medicines Agency's Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use on the authorization of new medicines in the EU, and updates on EU marketing authorization changes recommended by the CHMP.
March features nearly 20 user fee goal dates, including a crowd of novel candidates for crowded areas like hemophilia, heart disease and urinary tract infections, as well as the potentially first therapies for a rare eye disease and hyperphagia of Prader-Willi syndrome.