Investigations of hybrid infill pattern in additive manufactured tablets: A novel approach towards tunable drug release

Abstract

The significance of 3D printing has risen exponentially in biomedical and pharmaceutical applications. Its potential in the field of fabricating drug delivery systems, by virtue of processing biocompatible polymers, has been very lucrative. This work aims to tap the interstitial drug delivery kinetics that are often inaccessible through machine‐specific infill patterns in additive manufactured tablets fabricated using PVA biopolymer as an excipient. In this regard, a myo‐inositol containing tablet has been printed using Fused Deposition Modeling preceded by Hot Melt Extrusion drug loading route. Two machine‐specific infill patterns were taken, namely straight and grid. Later, these two distinct patterns were juxtaposed to obtain novel hybrid infill patterns in the tablets. Then, these tablets and their filament were subjected to various thermal, mechanical, imaging and pharmaceutical characterization tests to assess the feasibility of the research attempt. Finally, dissolution tests were conducted to evaluate their dissolution behavior over a time period. The characterization tests proved the scientific viability of this attempt along with amorphous existence of drug in the polymeric filament. The dissolution results showed favorable drug release by achieving interstitial dissolution timings with surface area/volume (SA/V) ratio being found to be the principal factor.

Investigations into 4D printed PLA/graphite composite with thermal induced shape memory effect

“…Usually, intrinsic characteristics like shape memory (Lendlein and Gould, 2019) and piezoelectricity (Kuang et al, 2018) allow the printed parts to respond to outside stimuli. Researchers in academia and industry have become more interested in SMP-based materials because of the shape memory effect, which has potential applications in biomedical devices and tissue engineering (Reddy and Sharma, 2023). The development of 3D printing technology offers a novel and alluring approach to manufacturing composites because researchers are constantly seeking innovative methods to improve efficiency.…”