研究人员已经使用体积3D打印来在几秒钟内制造载有药物的片剂，据报道是第一次。
来自University College London(UCL), the圣地亚哥大学（USC），MERLN Institute for Technology-Inspired Regenerative Medicine, and pharmaceutical 3D printing specialistFabRx，研究人员在17秒内成功地生产了帕酰甲氨基酚的片剂，这比在研究和某些临床环境中打印药物的当前方法的速度明显快。
The team believes its work demonstrates the suitability of volumetric 3D printing for producing drug products using additive manufacturing, and could potentially enable rapid, on-demand production of medicines and medical devices in the future.
Commercializing 3D printed drugs
3D printing offers a number of advantages for clinical pharmaceutical drug development over traditional methods. Not only does the technology enable medicines to bepersonalized to the needs of individual patients, but it also has the potential to expedite drug delivery timelines andprovide on-demand medication对于医院，药房和难以到达的地区的人来说。
尽管近年来在研究水平上广泛证明了这些好处，但该技术的临床潜力尚未实现。FabRX是该领域的先驱之一，他开发了自己的GMP准备就绪（良好的制造实践）制药3D打印机，the M3DIMAKER, which is currently available for research purposes.
In the past, FabRx has leveraged its pharmaceutical 3D printing capabilities to producepersonalized medicine for children与罕见的代谢疾病枫糖浆尿液疾病（MSUD），并在表面上制造带有盲文和月亮图案的片剂视力障碍的援助医学。
最近，FabRX，UCL和USC共同努力3D印刷新颖的药物鼻塞设计用于治疗干眼疾病，以及能够从供水中取出药品。
Aside from FabRx, there are several other companies taking strides to commercialize the technology. In fact,Aprecia已经意识到3D印刷药物的商业潜力，获得了FDA批准的Spritam癫痫药早在2015年。从那以后，该公司与非营利研发公司合作巴特尔到increase its manufacturing outputand advance itsZipDose 3D printing systemfrom clinical supply to commercial sale.
同时，全球制药公司Merck进入了一个联合项目EOS组companyAMCM到develop and produce 3D printed tablets, initially for clinical trials and then later for commercial manufacturing.
Volumetric 3D printing tablets
While progress is being made in the3D印刷药品的商业化, challenges still remain to fully translate the technology from the lab to clinics on the ground. In particular, current 3D printing technologies are not yet capable of scaling up to produce the required billions of tablets per year for commercial manufacturing, due to throughput challenges.
In their latest study, the researchers sought to overcome this particular obstacle by leveraging volumetric 3D printing, which offers rapid printing speeds. Unlike layer-by-layer vat photopolymerization techniques, volumetric printing cures an entire 3D geometry simultaneously within a vat of resin using light, to producewhole objects in a single step。
The team claims this is the first time volumetric printing has been used to produce drug-loaded tablets, and significantly shortened the time needed to produce the tablets to a matter of seconds. The researchers tested six different resin formulations, each containing paracetamol, a cross-linking monomer and a photoinitiator, and were able to tune the printed tablets’ drug release rates to the desired speed.
The volumetric 3D printer used for the study is from FabRx, and is based on a digital light projector made up of a digital mirror device, a UV light source, and UV optical lenses. The researchers 3D printed paracetamol-loaded tablets, or “Printlets” as FabRx calls them, in torus shapes 11mm in diameter and 4mm in height, with a 3mm diameter hole.
该团队选择在圆环形状上打印片剂，因为几何形状与椎间盘相比提供了更大的表面积与体积比，因此加速了药物释放速率。仅在7到17秒内，每种树脂配方都连续打印了八个打印线，然后进行固结后过程，在该过程中，它们被用异丙醇洗涤，并在20°C的烤箱中放置一小时。
根据研究人员的说法，该方法是通过3D打印来生产个性化平板电脑的最快方法，迄今已证明，因此证实了体积3D打印以快速生产药品的适用性。
Going forwards, the team will look to develop a system to automatically optimize the printing parameters for different photosensitive resins, which could involve the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate the development process and predict the printing performance of different formulations. This could also enable the fabrication of more complex geometries to extend the application of volumetric 3D printing to other drug-loaded medical devices.
While further research is needed to investigate the biocompatibility of the photosensitive resins used in the study, the team believes that volumetric 3D printing could “enable a virtuous cycle of personalized medicine and provide significant improvement in health outcomes.”
Further information on the study can be found in the paper titled:“Volumetric 3D printing for rapid production of medicines,”发表在《添加剂制造杂志》上。该研究由L. Rodriguez-Pombo，X. Xu，A。Seijo-Rabina，J。Ong，C。Alvarez-Lorenzo，C。Rial，D。Nieto，S。Gaisford，A。Basit和A. Basit和A. Basit和A.A. Goyanes。
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Featured image showsthe volumetric 3D printed Printlets. Image via Additive Manufacturing.
