Cutaneous pharmacokinetics-based bioequivalence: A clinical dermal open flow microperfusion verification study using lidocaine and prilocaine combination topical products.

Background: Using accurate, sensitive, reproducible and efficient in vivo cutaneous pharmacokinetics (PK)-based bioequivalence (BE) approaches can promote the development of topical generic drug products. A clinical dermal open flow microperfusion (dOFM) study has previously demonstrated the BE of topical drug products containing a hydrophilic drug. However, the utility of dOFM to evaluate the topical BE of drug products containing moderately lipophilic drugs, more representative of most topical drugs, has not yet been established.

Objective: To evaluate the ability of a clinical dOFM study to assess BE of topical products containing two moderately lipophilic drugs that have only minor differences in chemical and physical properties.

Methods: The study included 20 healthy subjects. Four application sites on each thigh were treated with fixed dose lidocaine/prilocaine combination products, and dermal drug concentrations were monitored with two dOFM probes per application site for 12 h. A reference cream was compared to itself and to an approved generic cream (both serving as positive controls for BE), and to a gel (negative control). BE was established based on AUC and C using the scaled-average-BE approach. Systemic exposure of both drugs was assessed throughout the study.

Results: BE was successfully demonstrated for the positive controls, and not for the negative control, for both drugs. The systemic exposure of both drugs was negligible.

Conclusions: dOFM accurately demonstrated BE between bioequivalent topical creams, sensitively discriminated between different formulations and differentiated the cutaneous PK of both study drugs, even though they differ only slightly in chemical and physical properties. These results support the utility of dOFM as a cutaneous PK-based BE approach for topical lipophilic drugs, including lidocaine and prilocaine.