Establishment and Validation of an Automated System for the Antifactor IIa Assay: A Case Study of Potency Assessment of a Pharmaceutical Gel Formulation

Antithrombotic agents and anticoagulant drugs, such as those from the heparin family, are employed in clinical settings for the prevention and treatment of clotting, thromboembolism, and wound healing. The potency assessment of antithrombotic agents is typically conducted using antifactor IIa assay with manual systems which are time-consuming and often lack repeatability. Here, we present a novel automated system that significantly enhances assay repeatability, attaining an outstandingly low relative standard deviation (RSD) % of only 0.6% for repeatability. This system has been applied to a pharmaceutical gel formulation for wound healing developed by Abdi Ibrahim Pharmaceuticals R&D Center as a case study for validation. The automated system demonstrated substantial improvements over manual systems in linearity (R2 = 0.9927), precision, accuracy, specificity, and robustness. The system aligns with the European Pharmacopoeia specifications, promising to enhance quality control across pharmaceutical formulations and conduct absorbance-based end-point assays within the pharmaceutical industry while offering increased throughput and cost-effectiveness.