Pharmaceutical-grade oral films as substrates for printed medicine

Abstract

In contact-less printing, such as piezo-electric drop on demand printing used in the study, the drop formation process is independent of the substrate. This means that having developed a printable formulation, printed pharmaceutical dosage forms can be obtained on any pharmaceutical grade substrate, such as polymer-based films. In this work we evaluated eight different oral films based on their suitability as printing substrates for sodium picosulfate. The different polymer films were compared regarding printed spot morphology, chemical stability and dissolution profile. The morphology of printed sodium picosulfate was investigated with scanning electron microscopy and optical coherence tomography. The spreading of the deposited drops was found to be governed by the contact angle of the ink with the substrate. The form of the sodium picosulfate drops changed on microcrystalline cellulose films at ambient conditions over 8 weeks and stayed unchanged on other tested substrates. Sodium picosulfate remained amorphous on all substrates according to small and wide angle X-ray scattering, differential scanning calorimetry and polarized light microscopy measurements. The absence of chemical interactions between the drug and substrates, as indicated by infrared spectroscopy, makes all tested substrates suitable for printing sodium picosulfate onto them.

In vitro testing of flash-frozen sublingual membranes for storage and reproducible permeability studies of macromolecular drugs from solution or nanofiber mats

“…Although a variety of sublingual dosage forms have been described from sublingual tablets or sprays through mucoadhesive wafers, to nanofiber strips (Borbás et al, 2015;Vrbata et al, 2013), and printed films (Wimmer-Teubenbacher et al, 2018), the majority of sublingual drugs (over 20) currently available on the pharmaceutical market are declared as oral thin films. They include for instance opioid pain killers (fentanyl), anti-migraine triptans (sumatriptan), cardiovascular drugs (captopril) and several others (e.g.…”

Inkjet Printing of Pharmaceuticals

“…Results have shown rapid disintegration of the films with high linearity being observed between the theoretical and the measured doses of warfarin. [ 26 ] Inkjet‐printed ODFs with drugs like enalapril maleate, [ 42 ] rasagiline mesylate, [ 28 ] and sodium picosulfate [ 29 ] have also been developed. More details on the compositions of these ODFs films can found in Table 1.…”

Trends in the production methods of orodispersible films

“…In this type of contactless printing, ODF can be obtained on any pharmaceutical grade substrates, such as polymer-based films or placebo ODF (Genina et al, 2013b). However, the nature of substrate (Table 3 determines the contact angle and the wettability (Wimmer-Teubenbacher et al, 2018), other than the disintegration time and the patient acceptability. The contact angle between the ink and the substrate influences both the payload and API physicochemical stability (Azizi Machekposhti et al, 2019).…”