A flexible-dose dispenser for immediate and extended release 3D printed tablets

Abstract

The advances in personalised medicine increased the demand for a fast, accurate and reliable production method of tablets that can be digitally controlled by healthcare staff. A flexible dose tablet system is presented in this study that proved to be suitable for immediate and extended release tablets with a realistic drug loading and an easy-to-swallow tablet design. The method bridges the affordable and digitally controlled Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) 3D printing with a standard pharmaceutical manufacturing process, Hot Melt Extrusion (HME). The reported method was compatible with three methacrylic polymers (Eudragit RL, RS and E) as well as a cellulose-based one (hydroxypropyl cellulose, HPC SSL). The use of a HME based pharmaceutical filament preserved the linear relationship between the mass and printed volume and was utilized to digitally control the dose via an input from computer software with dose accuracy in the range of 91-95%. Higher resolution printing quality doubled the printing time, but showed a little effect on in vitro release pattern of theophylline and weight accuracy. Physical characterization studies indicated that the majority of the model drug (theophylline) in the 3D printed tablet exists in a crystal form. Owing to the small size, ease of use and the highly adjustable nature of FDM 3D printers, the method holds promise for future individualised treatment.

Adaptation of pharmaceutical excipients to FDM 3D printing for the fabrication of patient-tailored immediate release tablets

“…Thus, FDM 3D printing is a highly attractive in modifying the dose to suit patients' individual needs. Analysis of the drug content of 3D printed tablets demonstrated the capability of the bench-top FDM printer in fabricating tablets with acceptable in-batch drug content variations analogous to findings of Pietrzak et al (2015). (Table 1).…”

“…The friability revealed no variations and was demonstrated to be 0% for all the formulation. Unlike tablets generated from other 3D printed technologies such as EXT (Khaled et al, 2014a) and powder-based 3D printing (Katstra et al, 2000b;Yu et al, 2009), the friability of tablets generated using via FDM 3D printing tends to be very low or even zero (Goyanes et al, 2014a;Goyanes et al, 2015c;Pietrzak et al, 2015).…”

An investigation into the use of polymer blends to improve the printability of and regulate drug release from pharmaceutical solid dispersions prepared via fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printing

“…In addition use of these few polymers often provides little flexibility in tailoring the drug release profiles and limits the application of any delivery system produced from them. Recently the addition of plasticizers to improve the processability of controlled release polymers such as HPC and Eudragit RL and RS during FDM printing has been reported [10,12]. However, to the best of our knowledge so far there is no report on the use of polymer blends to FDM print solid dispersions for the dissolution enhancement for poorly soluble drugs.…”

The manufacture of 3D printing of medical grade TPU

“…It is a semi-crystal polymer. The density is 1.10 g/cm 3 , and tensile strength is assessed as 49.99 MPa with the ASTM D412 test method.…”

“…Due to its ability to produce complex geometrical parts for personalized customization, it has been widely used for rapid prototyping technology, especially in medicine and health care [2][3][4][5][6], such as the fabrication of customized implants and scaffolds for rehabilitation, human bone techniques, and drug delivery device fabrication.…”