Here at 3D Rapid Print, one of the fastest growing 3D Printing companies in the Thames Valley, we like to keep abreast of the latest innovations in 3D printing.
On December 9th 2021, researchers at University College London (UCL) announced that they had developed a new 3D printing technique to use the light from a smartphone screen to make medicines in the form of 3D printed tablets called Printlets. They used a smartphone-based 3D printer that they had developed in collaboration with pharmaceutics company FabRx, which was co-founded by 3 members of the UCL team. Their research was published in the International Journal of Pharmaceutics.
A patient would be sent a personalised resin formulation that would form the basis of the Printlet, consisting of the drug dissolved in a solution of a photoreactive chemical. The patient’s doctor would prescribe a set dose of the medicine before the patient would pour the drug solution into the printer’s resin tank. Next, they would use an app to customise the shape of the Printlet. Finally, inserting their smartphone into the printer would cause the light from its screen to react with the drug solution, solidifying it into a Printlet of the appropriate size, shape and quantity of the drug.
The researchers tested their system with 2 common smartphones, with the printer calibrated to work with the phones’ screen set at its maximum brightness. They prepared Printlets containing a common blood thinner called warfarin in different dosages, sizes and shapes, such as caplets, diamonds and lattices that would enable faster release of the drug. In addition, they tested how well the drug could be absorbed into the bloodstream by dissolving a warfarin Printlet into a laboratory model designed to mimic the conditions of the human digestive tract. They found that the warfarin was gradually released over a 24-hour period and that its release rate varied with the Printlet’s size and shape, concluding that Printlets could be customised depending on how fast a medication should be absorbed into the bloodstream.
However, the researchers warned that their method still needed to undergo safety checks before Printlets could be tested in human trials, arguing that a regulatory framework for 3D printed medication would be needed very soon. Nonetheless, they highlighted that the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency is currently investigating if a new framework would enable patients to manufacture their medicines at home with new and similar technologies to theirs.
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Disclaimer: Featured image of “Vitamin D pills” has been dedicated to the public domain by its author (known only as Mx. Granger) under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
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