Interesting. The study says that celecoxib is poorly soluble in water (and this usually reduces the absorption of drugs in general).
However, celecoxib seems to be soluble in ethanol (100 mg of celecoxib will dissolve in each 1 ml of ethanol), and quite soluble in oils (36.4 mg/ml for olive oil for example), according to this paper (see Table 1).
So the fact that the skin contains some oil anyway on its surface might promote the absorption. But you could also dissolve powdered celecoxib into some oil like Baby Oil, and then apply to the skin, and that should absorb better.
Note also that with the approach I used, which was to apply celecoxib powder to a large area of skin, that will increase the absorption (the larger the large the area of skin you use, the better the transdermal absorption).
Of course you will only know for sure how much you are absorbing if you perform a pharmacokinetic study, in which you apply celecoxib to the skin in a suitable carrier oil, and then measure the celecoxib concentration achieved in the blood.
No idea if it would be a suitable option, but my husband uses DMSO at work to enable solutions to be better taken up by skin samples - could something like that help with transdermal application?
Edit for spelling
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