Evaluation of the highly variable agomelatine pharmacokinetics in Chinese healthy subjects to support bioequivalence study

PLoS One. 2014 Oct 20;9(10):e109300. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0109300. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

Objectives: We aim to obtain the intra-subject coefficient of variability of a highly variable antidepressant agomelatine in humans, and propose an adjusted bioequivalence assessment strategy.

Methods: A single-dose, randomized crossover design was conducted in four periods (reference administered thrice, placebo administered once) separated by seven days. A validated LC-MS/MS assay was used to measure drug concentrations in serial blood samples.

Results: The intra-subject coefficient of variability was calculated using the residual variance of ANOVA analysis, and the results for Cmax and AUC0-t was 78.34% and 43.52%, respectively, in Chinese healthy subjects. The sample size required for standard BE study were 124(192, 340) if the expected deviation between the reference and generic products was set to 0 (5%, 10%).

Conclusions: Agomelatine meets the criteria for highly variable drug in Chinese healthy male subjects, and the traditional BE criteria for agomelatine needs to be adjusted to alleviate the resource and ethical burden of using a large numbers of subjects in clinical trials. Our clinical data on the intra-subject variability of agomelatine PK in Chinese healthy population enables to adjust bioequivalence (BE) assessment approach for agomelatine based on the RSABE approaches recommended by regulatory agencies.

Trial registration: ChiCTR.org ChiCTR-TTRCC-13003835.

Publication types

  • Randomized Controlled Trial
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Acetamides / pharmacokinetics*
  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Asian People*
  • Dose-Response Relationship, Drug
  • Healthy Volunteers*
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Reference Standards
  • Therapeutic Equivalency
  • Time Factors
  • Young Adult

Substances

  • Acetamides
  • agomelatine

Associated data

  • ChiCTR/CHICTRTTRCC13003835

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Scientific Foundation of China (No. 81373476, 81302851, 81301924, URL:http://www.nsfc.gov.cn), the National Science and Technology Major Projects for “Major New Drugs Innovation and Development” (2012ZX09303014-001, URL:http://www.nmp.gov.cn/). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.