Pharmaceutical products quality assessments – future!
What should one expect, after FDA completely destroyed, and rightly so, the credibility and usefulness as well as need for bioequivalence assessment (aka clinical trials) by removing its requirement from ANDA approvals, at least for hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and chloroquine (CQ) products to start with [1, 2]? It is to be noted that bioequivalence assessments have been shown to be scientifically invalid and irrelevant to establish the quality of the products based on their drug release assessment [3]. Not only such studies put large burden, financial and personnel, on the industry as well regulatory authorities for the development, manufacturing and approval of products but also expose healthy human subjects, in particular young adults, to potent chemicals (a serious unethical practice).
Products can easily and accurately be assessed using drug dissolution testing. However, to implement its (drug dissolution testing) valid use authorities, including FDA and USP, need to implement appropriate and scientifically valid dissolution testers and methods. Until then authorities’ claims regarding monitoring and establishing products quality will remain false and invalid.
COVID-19 pandemic exposed the burdensome and unnecessary regulatory practices and requirements. It also provides an opportunity to simplify the product development and manufacturing. Please consider the under-review Citizen Petition for removing the use of non-validated/non-qualified, hence non-GMP, USP drug dissolution testers/tests from regulatory requirements [4] and replace them with appropriate and scientifically valid tests and testers [5].
