Lynne S Taylor, Niraj E Trasi, Hitesh S Purohit, Dajun Sun, Minori Kinjo, Zhanglin Ni, Sanjida Mahjabeen, Kairui Kevin Feng, Wei-Jhe Sun, Murali K Matta, Brian Decker, Raymond E Galinsky
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Tacrolimus capsules contain the drug as the amorphous form. It is well known that drug crystallinity is a risk factor for the performance of amorphous formulations. This study investigated the impact of varying levels of crystalline drug on the pharmacokinetics of tacrolimus following oral dosing of a 5 mg capsule under fasting conditions. Two treatments with percent crystallinity of 20% and 50% were achieved by exposing a marketed generic tacrolimus product to open dish storage conditions of 35 °C and 75% relative humidity (RH) for up to 20 days. Crystallinity was monitored with X-ray powder diffraction. Prograf®, the reference listed drug (RLD), an amorphous generic drug product, and generic drug products containing 20% and 50% crystalline tacrolimus were evaluated. All four treatments were administered to healthy participants in a randomized, single-dose, four-treatment, four-period, four-way crossover study. Blood sampling occurred over 24 h. The amorphous generic tacrolimus product was determined not to be bioequivalent to the RLD. The capsules containing both 20% and 50% crystalline tacrolimus also failed the bioequivalence recommendations when compared to the amorphous generic or to the RLD. Both levels of crystalline tacrolimus resulted in BE failure for both Cmax and AUC parameters. The impact of tacrolimus crystallization was greater for maximum blood concentration (Cmax) values relative to the area-under-the-curve (AUC) values. This study demonstrates that crystalline tacrolimus formed in a marketed generic product and these changes resulted in variable pharmacokinetics which could be of significant clinical concern.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences will publish original research papers, original research notes, invited topical reviews (including Minireviews), and editorial commentary and news. The area of focus shall be concepts in basic pharmaceutical science and such topics as chemical processing of pharmaceuticals, including crystallization, lyophilization, chemical stability of drugs, pharmacokinetics, biopharmaceutics, pharmacodynamics, pro-drug developments, metabolic disposition of bioactive agents, dosage form design, protein-peptide chemistry and biotechnology specifically as these relate to pharmaceutical technology, and targeted drug delivery.