An investigation into the use of polymer blends to improve the printability of and regulate drug release from pharmaceutical solid dispersions prepared via fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printing

Abstract

FDM 3D printing has been recently attracted increasing research efforts towards the production of personalized solid oral formulations. However, commercially available FDM printers are extremely limited with regards to the materials that can be processed to few types of thermoplastic polymers, which often may not be pharmaceutically approved materials nor ideal for optimizing dosage form performance of poor soluble compounds. This study explored the use of polymer blends as a formulation strategy to overcome this processability issue and to provide adjustable drug release rates from the printed dispersions. Solid dispersions of felodipine, the model drug, were successfully fabricated using FDM 3D printing with polymer blends of PEG, PEO and Tween 80 with either Eudragit E PO or Soluplus. As PVA is one of most widely used polymers in FDM 3D printing, a PVA based solid dispersion was used as a benchmark to compare the polymer blend systems to in terms processability. The polymer blends exhibited excellent printability and were suitable for processing using a commercially available FDM 3D printer. With 10% drug loading, all characterization data indicated that the model drug was molecularly dispersed in the matrices.During in vitro dissolution testing, it was clear that the disintegration behavior of the formulations significantly influenced the rates of drug release. Eudragit EPO based blend dispersions showed bulk disintegration; whereas the Soluplus based blends showed the 'peeling' style disintegration of strip-by-strip. The results indicated that interplay of the miscibility between excipients in the blends, the solubility of the materials in the dissolution media and the degree of fusion between the printed strips during FDM process can be used to manipulate the drug release rate of the dispersions. This brings new insight into the design principles of controlled release formulations using FDM 3D printing.

Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) 3D Printed Tablets for Intragastric Floating Delivery of Domperidone

“…Amongst the different developed 3D printing technologies, fused deposition modeling (FDM) has several significant advantages such as low-cost manufacturing, the compatibility of using the combination of pharmaceutical grade polymers with APIs through hot-melt extrusion (HME) and the ability to fabricate hollow objects 14–16 . Previous pharmaceutical researchers attempted to use FDM-based 3D printing mainly in fabricating drug delivery systems with immediate or controlled release characteristics 17–19 , hot-melt extruding filaments of pharmaceutical grade polymers 15, 20, 21 , lowering printing temperatures 22 , and preparing personalized topical drug delivery together with 3D scanning 23 . To our knowledge, there is no report on the FDM based hollow tablets for intragastric floating sustained release (FSR) of drugs.…”

3D printing of functional anatomical insoles

“…Such printers extrude the material employed to manufacture the object through the main head, while the other head is used to extrude the watersoluble support material (see Figure 9), which is exclusively used as a scaffolding or support so that the main material can be deposited on it. In the last post-processing stage, the support material is removed from the part by dissolving it in water or other liquid substance [19]. Focusing on the footwear industry, AM is a feasible technology for the manufacture of anatomical insoles, in that customisation of the object to be produced does not increase the cost of the process and the resulting products are completely customised.…”

“…[18] proposed two general strategies to produce antimicrobial resins to be used as a base material for 3D printing. [19] investigated the use of polymer blends able to release drugs in a controlled and adjustable way that are printable by FDM. …”

Nano-biphasic calcium phosphate/polyvinyl alcohol composites with enhanced bioactivity for bone repair via low-temperature three-dimensional printing and loading with platelet-rich fibrin

“…5 3D printing is a broad concept that can be classified as additive manufacturing. Common additive technologies applied in medicine include selective laser sintering, 12 fused deposition modeling, 13 multi-jet modeling, 14 stereolithography, 15 powder-based printing, 16 and robocasting. 17 All of these techniques can be used to rapidly fabricate products with specific shapes, well-defined internal structures, and highly interconnected porosities.…”