Fabrication of flexible composite drug films via foldable linkages using electrohydrodynamic printing

Abstract

The simple method to manufacture a flexible multi-drug with hydrophilic and hydrophobic molecules-loaded composite membrane via three dimensional (3D) electrohydrodynamic (EHD) printing has been demonstrated in this study. The composite membrane consists of two different drug-loaded sections: cellulose acetateibuprofen (CA-IBU) and cellulose acetate-paracetamol (CA-Para), respectively, with an intermediate polycaprolactone (PCL) folding component. The composite membranes can be folded and housed in commercial capsules to aid swallowing. By changing the number of PCL layers in the intermediate layers, it is possible to control and modify the mechanical and unfolding properties of the composite membrane. IBU and Para are loaded into the CA polymeric matrix in their amorphous states, with the matrices exhibiting Higuchi and first order release kinetics, respectively. The combination of IBU and Para can potentially be used as analgesic for patients. Magnetic nanoparticles as a functional material can be incorporated into the PCL matrix for wide targeting and traceable applications. The composite membrane here possesses good biocompatibility and flexibility; enabling extensive application prospects in drug combination therapy and personalized medicine.

High Precision 3D Printing for Micro to Nano Scale Biomedical and Electronic Devices

“…The flexible printed membrane contains foldable linkages which can unfold to increase surface area for drug release; this effect increases retention time which is required to reduce dosing. The resultant structure possessed PCL fibers measuring between 4-19 µm, with a mean of 10.5 ± 3.2 µm, therefore demonstrating the precision control of EHD printing [59]. In addition, EHD printing allows flexibility in material selection and has ease in modulating design parameters for micro/nano scale features.…”

“…Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) printing is controlled by computer procedures utilizing electrostatic forces to prepare fibers or particles with sizes from nano-range to a few microns through electrically charged printable ink [59], as il-lustrated in Figure 2d. EHD printing technology provides an effective and low-cost approach for the fabrication of micro-/nano structures [60][61][62], while allowing the application of biomedicine [63], quantum dot LEDs [64], flexible/stretchable electronics [65,66], microbial and sensor chips [67].…”

Harnessing artificial intelligence for the next generation of 3D printed medicines

“…It is this feature that has allowed EHDP to garner attention, which provides EHDP with the ability to achieve smaller printing resolutions and faster printing times compared to similar 3DP setups where an electric field is not incorporated [113][114][115]. EHDP has been applied in pharmaceutics to primarily fabricate films [116][117][118][119][120]. However, EHDP has been reported to produce unstable jets, which can result in large batch-to-batch variation, as well as limited thus far to vertically small products [121,122].…”

Recent applications of electrical, centrifugal, and pressurised emerging technologies for fibrous structure engineering in drug delivery, regenerative medicine and theranostics

“…The ever-increasing process understanding in this remit has enabled the ES process to evolve, yielding complex and innovative systems; including coaxial systems containing multiple concentrically arranged needles (yielding multi-layered fibers) [186,[219][220][221][222][223][224][225][226][227][228][229][230][231][232][233] and electrohydrodynamic printing [2,57,142,[234][235][236][237][238][239][240][241]; enabling the fabrication of prepatterned, aligned fibers. An emerging development includes systems utilising a needleless approach; yielding fibers within the nanometer range without the use of a conductive nozzle [242][243][244][245][246][247][248][249][250][251].…”