3D Printing for Complex Drug Delivery Systems
Personalized medicine involves analyzing an individual's unique genetic profile to guide healthcare diseases to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease. Genetic variations, particularly single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), predispose certain individuals to specific diseases and also allow certain people to respond better to specific drugs.
Differences in drug responsiveness between individuals who are given the same exact dose of a drug may be due to a variable number of receptors or differences in how the receptors respond to the drug. Slight genetic alterations due to SNPs may contribute to changes in receptor number or drug sensitivity, both of which can alter the way a person's body reacts to a specific drug dose.
3D printing can be a game changer in the realm of personalized medicine. 3D-printed tablets can be carefully tailored to each individual's pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. Drug release profiles and individualized dosing can be designed for optimal effects in conjunction with a person's genetic profile.
The layer-by-layer 3D printing or additive manufacturing technique allows the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) for multiple drug combinations to be: pulverized into a powder form added to a liquid solution printed using a prespecified geometrical pattern and number of layers hardened to solid form in a drying process for each individual printed layer Different 3D printing techniques can be applied to mass-produce polypills. The printing parameters and dosing can easily be changed using computer software to design and manufacture tablets that contain multidrug combinations based on each person's unique genetic profile.
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