Time to rescind the regulatory requirements of bioequivalence evaluations and the current pharmacopeial drug dissolution practices as these do not provide quality assessment of pharmaceutical products
Considering the non-specificity, because of confounded variabilities from the physiological system, drug release assessment of pharmaceutical products (tablet/capsule) for which this test is conducted, the bioequivalence test becomes a scientifically and statistically in-valid practice. See here for further discussion on the topic (1,2).
An in vitro drug release test, commonly known as drug dissolution test, which by its nature avoids the above mentioned non-specificity, provides a better alternative for assessing drug release characteristics of the products thus their quality. Pharmacopeias worldwide recommend this test. Unfortunately the recommended testers suffer a serious design problem thus providing irrelevant and unpredictable results not reflecting product quality or lack of it (3,4). In short, the drug dissolution tests as currently recommended are based on non-qualified and/or non-validated testers, hence results from the testing cannot be relied upon. Therefore, their use is to be discontinued as well.
As a solution, a simple revised dissolution testing approach has been suggested which would provide superior drug release evaluation thus quality of the products for human use (5, 6). In addition, as it is an in vitro technique, the test can be conducted without the use of human subjects avoiding unnecessary risk to participating healthy volunteers and/or patients. The suggested approach not only provides scientifically valid method for assessing quality of the pharmaceutical products but also would give much needed flexibility to pharmaceutical industry for innovation to bring out products faster, and with a reduced price, into the market.
