Ink-jet printing versus solvent casting to prepare oral films: Effect on mechanical properties and physical stability

Abstract

The aim of this work was to compare and contrast the mechanical properties and physical stabilities of oral films prepared with either thermal ink-jet printing (TIJP) or solvent casting (SC). Clonidine hydrochloride was selected as a model drug because of its low therapeutic dose and films were prepared using cellulose polymers. Mechanical testing showed that the printed films had Young's moduli and tensile strength values similar to the free film, while casted films were significantly more brittle. The drug also appeared to crystallize out of casted films during stress testing whereas printed films remained unchanged. The dissolution behavior of printed and cast films were similar, because of the rapid disintegration of the polymer. The conclusion is that printing resulted in a better film than casting because the drug resided on the film, rather than in the film where it could exert a plasticizing effect.

Oral films as breakthrough tools for oral delivery of proteins/peptides

“…Hot-melt extrusion is an alternative method to solvent-casting for oral films production that allows avoiding solvents [26]. Briefly, instead of using a solvent, both excipients and active pharmaceutical ingredients are homogenized in a dry state and subsequently molten and extruded.…”

“…Hot-melt extrusion method is impracticable for proteins, especially thermo labile proteins, not only due to heating but also to the shear stress applied during the process. Flexographic printing technology (FPT) is a gentle process that deposits active pharmaceutical substance onto oral films by contact printing [26]. FPT can be particularly suitable for heat-sensitive molecules such as proteins and peptides thus representing a very promising tool to effectively incorporate proteins/peptides into oral films [27].…”

“…Like FPT, inkjet-printing add solution drops containing the active substances onto (and not into) the oral film but with a very high precision (5-15 pL/droplet) [28]. Inkjet-printing mechanism of adding active pharmaceutical ingredients does not affect the mechanical properties of oral films which is an important advantage compared to solvent casting [26]. Nevertheless, since proteins and peptides are very prone to suffer hydrolytic degradation, incorporation into droplets must be performed with care especially regarding solvent choice.…”

Effects of formulation composition on the characteristics of mucoadhesive films prepared by hot-melt extrusion technology

“…Currently, solvent casting, [8,9] printing, [10][11][12][13] compression [14] and hot-melt extrusion (HME) [15,16] are the various techniques used for preparation of films. Although solvent casting is the most commonly used method for film preparation, it has many disadvantages, like multistep process, batch to batch variations, air entrapment and removal of solvent from the product is time-consuming and tedious.…”

Taste masked thin films printed by jet dispensing

“…substrates (Sandler et al 2011), controlled release of active substances (Genina et al 2012), 31 multilayer film coatings (Preis et al 2015, Buanz et al 2014), microparticles (Sharma et al 32 2013) bioprinting (Chang et al 2011) or even transdermal microneedles (Uddin et al 2015). 33…”