Combining drugs into one pill for the senior citizen who has trouble remembering to take medicine. For the children who are taking medicines, use chocolate medicines for them. Drugs are printed at the local personalized dosages that best suit you.
3D printing drugs were first approved by the US Food and Drug Administration In 2015. The Drug that got approval for 3D printing was Spritam which is used for epilepsy. Other manufacturing companies are developing 3D printing medicines on their own.
For 3D printing drugs to get adopted widely lots of quality control measurements should be done. NIST research scientist Thomas P. Forbes evaluate various types of 3D printing drugs and it works as designed. “Quality by design” analysis is used to evaluate the best protocols and procedures to ensure the working of 3D printer drugs and their dosages. Forbes mainly focused on the most common inkjet printers and similar systems among systems that are available. Forbes’s paper does not make any recommendations but his research identifies and tests several methods of evaluation in 3D printing.
Advantages of 3D printing:
When doctors prescribe you any drugs, they know in what dosage drugs are available, and among those dosages choose the best for you. 3D printing can give you individualized dosage. Drugs can be personalized based on a person’s age and health. You may personalize the form of the medicine.
Example: If some drugs are best by the I.V. route they can be personalized based on patient. It has huge potential to change vaccine distribution.
Quality control process mentioned in Forbes journal:
The process starts with the delivery of the printing ink and confirms the quality of the ink. Use a technique called ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy. It can work by shining UV light through samples. The sample absorbed shows its chemical composition. In the next procedure, you need to verify the working of the printer you’re using. LEDs are present beneath the individual nozzles in many commercial printers, Flow of light is detected by a type of light detector photodiode. The photodiode will detect if the nozzle stops releasing liquid. If there is a blockage in a nozzle that will also detect.
To confirm the amount of the drug printed correctly use a nondestructive way. There is still work that needs to be done on this.
Journal reference:
Forbes, T. P., et al. (2024). Quality by Design Considerations for Drop-on-Demand Point-of-Care Pharmaceutical Manufacturing of Precision Medicine. Molecular Pharmaceutics.
