The objective of this study was to investigate the documentary requirements for generic drug application and post approval changes of drugs and to suggest improvements for the performance and decision criteria of BE study according to the internationa...
The objective of this study was to investigate the documentary requirements for generic drug application and post approval changes of drugs and to suggest improvements for the performance and decision criteria of BE study according to the international harmonization, and to provide guidelines for bioequivalence (BE) studies of selected drugs. Documentary requirements for generic drug application and post approval changes of drugs was filed from Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, Korea (MFDS), Food and drug administration, USA (FDA), Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan (MHLW) and regulatory agency of European Union. For the generic drug application, administrative documents and product information, common technical document summaries, quality documents, and BE studies or biowaiver justification data should be submitted to the regulatory agency. For the post approval changes, documents for stability, in vitro dissolution data, and in vivo BE studies could be submitted according to the level of change. We compared the detailed condition for BE study and in vitro dissolution test among different countries and suggested improvement for these studies and biowaiver criteria according to BCS considering the harmonization with the international standard. Moreover, we provided the summary of in vitro studies of 24 drug as an example for demonstrating BE using in vitro studies except for dissolution test. We also provided guidelines for in vitro dissolution test for 5 drugs, which were selected based on instability (clarithromycin and diacerein), practically insoluble drug (talniflumate and isotretinoin), and specific bioanalytical method (polysaccharide iron complex). BE regulations from this study can contribute the stimulation to generic drug development and facilitated generic drug approval.