Your first FDA meeting could shape the future of your entire development program.
But many biotech teams prepare for it as a regulatory event rather than a strategic decision point.
They focus on the meeting request, briefing package, questions, and presentation—without first agreeing on what the company needs to learn, which decisions FDA’s feedback must inform, or how the program will respond if the agency takes a different view.
The Biotech CEO’s Guide to Your First FDA Meeting offers a practical, executive-level framework for preparing more strategically.
Written by Nilou Sarah Arden, PhD—a former FDA regulator and global biopharma regulatory leader—the guide helps biotech founders, CEOs, executives, and development teams look beyond the mechanics of the meeting and ask a more important question:
What must this FDA interaction enable us to decide?
Inside, you will learn how to:
• Define the decisions for which your company needs FDA input
• Identify the most consequential uncertainties in your development plan
• Prioritize questions that could materially change the program
• Distinguish evidence, assumptions, beliefs, and unresolved uncertainty
• Integrate CMC, nonclinical, clinical, and regulatory strategies
• Recognize which questions should not be asked—or should not be asked yet
• Build a briefing package that supports clear, decision-useful feedback
• Prepare for disagreement, conditional advice, and unexpected responses
• Decide which commitments should be made now and which can wait
• Align the leadership team before entering the meeting
The guide also includes:
• A one-page FDA meeting strategy
• A five-minute strategic-readiness diagnostic
• A CEO checklist for final preparation
• A post-meeting framework for turning regulatory feedback into decisions, actions, and organizational learning
This is not a technical manual for writing an FDA briefing package. It is a field guide for leading the decisions around one.
Whether your company is preparing for a pre-IND meeting, an initial regulatory interaction, or another consequential FDA milestone, this guide will help you connect regulatory strategy to the wider development pathway—including evidence, manufacturing, clinical planning, capital, sequencing, risk, and future options.
Because a successful FDA meeting is not simply one that goes smoothly.
It is one that helps the company make better decisions.
Part of the Cambase Executive Field Guides series: practical intelligence for the decisions shaping the path from science to patients.