Additive Manufacturing and Printing Approaches for the Development of Pharmaceutical Dosage Forms with Improved Biopharmaceutical Attributes

Abstract

Pharmaceutical industry is moving ahead with the future experiencing an innovation in drug development through the introduction of personalized medicine technologies. Instead of adapting the dose which a patient actually needs, they were adapted to the manufacturer’s dose. Now patient specific or customized method of dosing and dose combinations has superior insistence rather than the standard mass medicines. Printing technology has gained interest during the last years for manufacturing of personalized dosage forms. For manufacturing of personalized drug products three dimensional printing (3DP) has expanded to the pharmaceutical industry. With the approval of first 3DP product an unprecedented opportunity for the discovery of new compounds and technologies has arisen. In this article, we have re-evaluated various printing technology and its utilization in personalized medicines. Further, we also discussed its history, advantages, challenges and various types of printing technologies with advantages and limitations particularly in the area of pharmaceutical research.