3D printing creates personalized pharmaceuticals – Physics World

From the article

>Personalized pills that release timed doses of medication tailored to an individual patient’s requirements could improve treatment effectiveness and increase patient compliance. With this goal, researchers at the University of Nottingham have used 3D printing of novel soluble inks to fabricate tablets that deliver drugs with a bespoke dose and release profile. The new technique, described in [*Materials Today Advances*](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590049824000304), paves the way for scalable batch production of customizable pills.

>Additive manufacturing – or 3D printing – provides a means to fabricate structures with controlled drug release profiles that can’t be created using conventional manufacturing methods. In particular, multi-material inkjet 3D printing (MM-IJ3DP) offers promise for precise deposition of multiple components at production scales. When creating personalized pills, however, the restricted choice of processable materials means that most studies have relied on swelling and diffusion mechanisms for drug delivery, limiting the ability to perform timed release of active material.

>Instead, [Yinfeng He](https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/cfam/meet-the-team/yinfeng.he) from the university’s [Centre for Additive Manufacturing](https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/cfam/index.aspx) and colleagues are investigating an inkjet-printable material with a dissolution-based release mechanism. They developed a biocompatible water-soluble ink using acrylomorpholine (ACMO), the photo-polymerized form of which provides a model excipient to enable drug release, and co-printed poly-ACMO with another polymer to create personalized pharmaceutical tablets.

>“This breakthrough not only highlights the potential of 3D printing in revolutionizing drug delivery, but also opens up new avenues for the development of next-generation personalized medicines,” says He in a press statement.