Yes / Three-dimensional printing (3DP) has demonstrated great potential for multi-material
fabrication because of its capability for printing bespoke and spatially separated material
conformations. Such a concept could revolutionise the pharmaceutical industry, enabling the
production of personalised, multi-layered drug products on demand. Here, we developed a novel
stereolithographic (SLA) 3D printing method that, for the first time, can be used to fabricate multi-layer
constructs (polypills) with variable drug content and/or shape. Using this technique, six drugs,
including paracetamol, cffeine, naproxen, chloramphenicol, prednisolone and aspirin, were printed
with dfferent geometries and material compositions. Drug distribution was visualised using Raman
microscopy, which showed that whilst separate layers were successfully printed, several of the drugs
diffused across the layers depending on their amorphous or crystalline phase. The printed constructs
demonstrated excellent physical properties and the different material inclusions enabled distinct drug
release profiles of the six actives within dissolution tests. For the first time, this paper demonstrates the
feasibility of SLA printing as an innovative platform for multi-drug therapy production, facilitating a
new era of personalised polypills.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/17370 |
| Date | 15 October 2019 |
| Creators | Robles-Martinez, P., Xu, X., Trenfield, S.J., Awad, A., Goyanes, A., Telford, Richard, Basit, A.W., Gaisford, S. |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article, Published version |
| Rights | © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
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