Semimechanistic Clearance Models of Oncology Biotherapeutics and Impact of Study Design: Cetuximab as a Case Study

This study aimed to explore the currently competing and new semimechanistic clearance models for monoclonal antibodies and the impact of clearance model misspecification on exposure metrics under different study designs exemplified for cetuximab. Six clearance models were investigated under four different study designs (sampling density and single/multiple‐dose levels) using a rich data set from two cetuximab clinical trials (226 patients with metastatic colorectal cancer) and using the nonlinear mixed‐effects modeling approach. A two‐compartment model with parallel Michaelis–Menten and time‐decreasing linear clearance adequately described the data, the latter being related to post‐treatment response. With respect to bias in exposure metrics, the simplified time‐varying linear clearance (CL) model was the best alternative. Time‐variance of the linear CL component should be considered for biotherapeutics if response impacts pharmacokinetics. Rich sampling at steady‐state was crucial for unbiased estimation of Michaelis–Menten elimination in case of the reference (parallel Michaelis–Menten and time‐varying linear CL) model.