An investigation into the feasibility of Fused Deposition Modelling for 3D printing oral pharmaceuticals

Nasereddin, Jehad (2020) An investigation into the feasibility of Fused Deposition Modelling for 3D printing oral pharmaceuticals. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) is a variant of 3D Printing (3DP) that relies on the melt extrusion of thermoplastic polymers for the fabrication of objects. Using FDM, objects with customised geometries, mass, shapes, and dimensions can be printed on-demand. This customisability makes FDM a robust method for creating patient-tailored, personalised dosage forms. Therefore, the past few years have seen an increase in research demonstrating the use of FDM to produce solid dosage forms. Various research efforts have demonstrated the capacity of FDM to create dosage forms with customised geometries, tailored release profiles, and polypills containing multiple drugs. However, there remains no commercially available products are produced by FDM. This may be due to the absence of a Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) compliant printer, and thus no approved manufacturing process utilising FDM. Furthermore, reported works describing the use of FDM as a pharmaceutical manufacturing process often employ a trial-and-error approach to arrive at a formulation, with little work demonstrating a thorough understanding of the FDM process and the involved parameter interactions as a whole. Parameters involved in the FDM process can be grouped into three main categories; material parameters (parameters relating to the material being printed), machine parameters (parameters relating to the particular model of printer), and process parameters (parameters are those relating to the particular printing process).

The work presented herein describes an investigation into the parameters involved in FDM, and their impact on the perceived quality parameters of 3D printed solid dosage forms, which should help to guide towards a more rational approach towards FDM printable dosage forms. The work conducted herein investigated material properties (melt flow, and mechanical flexibility), and FDM process parameters (printing speed, printing temperature, and infill density) and their impact on perceived quality attributes of the printed dosage forms (filament printability, weight uniformity, dimensional uniformity, reproducibility, drug release rate, printing road width). Furthermore, some process parameter interactions were also identified and discussed.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Pharmacy
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	14 Apr 2021 12:05
Last Modified:	14 Apr 2021 12:05
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/79747
DOI:

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