The European Bioanalysis Forum community's evaluation, interpretation and implementation of the European Medicines Agency guideline on Bioanalytical Method Validation

The European Medicines Agency's (EMA) 2011 guideline on bioanalytical method validation (BMV) was evaluated and subsequently intensely discussed by the European Bioanalysis Forum (EBF) during a 2-day workshop (EBF Workshop on the implementation of the EMA guideline on BMV, Chateau de Limelette, Limelette, Belgium, 15-16 March 2012). The goal of the evaluation and discussions was to come to a uniform interpretation of the guideline and thus to help facilitate a smooth implementation at our laboratories. Up front preparations for the workshop by dedicated teams concentrated on challenges on implementation: ambiguities, technical or operational challenges and issues in general. In addition, common understandings were identified as well as main differences to the 2011 US FDA guideline. The guideline was perceived as being well written with a clear structure, separating method validation from sample analysis and treating all relevant aspects one-by-one in a logical order. It is the first BMV guideline clearly addressing the specifics for ligand binding assays and it shows a good match with current scientific thinking. The EBF community considers the EMA BMV guideline an excellent basis for countries that are in the process of developing or updating their own BMV guideline.