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An insight into the impact of thermal process on dissolution profile and physical characteristics of theophylline tablets made through 3D printing compared to conventional methods

  • Nour Nashed
    ,
  • Matthew Lam
    ,
  • Tara Ghafourian
    ,
  • Lluis Pausas
    ,
  • Memory Jiri
    ,
  • Mridul Majumder
  • University of Sussex
    ,
  • M2M Pharmaceuticals Ltd.
Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Open access

Abstract

The dissolution profile is of great importance in drug delivery and is affected by the manufacturing method. Thus, it is important to study the influence of the thermal process on drug release in emerging technologies such as 3D printing-fused deposition modeling (FDM). For this purpose, the characteristics of 3D printed tablets were compared to those of tablets prepared by other thermal methods such as hot-melt extrusion (HME) and non-thermal methods such as physical mixture (PM). Theophylline was used as a drug model and blends of ethyl cellulose (EC) and hydroxypropyl cellulose (HPC) were used as a matrix former. The solid state of the drug in all formulations was investigated by differential scanning calorimetry, X-ray powder diffraction, and Fourier-transformed infrared spectroscopy. All studied tablets had the same weight and surface area/volume (SA/V). Dissolution data showed that, for some formulations, printed tablets interestingly had a faster release profile despite having the highest hardness values (>550 N) compared to HME and PM tablets. Porosity investigations showed that 100% infill printed tablets had the highest porosity (~20%) compared to HME (<10%) and PM tablets (≤11%). True density records were the lowest in printed tablets (~1.22 g/m3) compared to tablets made from both HME and PM methods (~1.26 g/m3), reflecting the possible increase in polymer specific volume while printing. This increase in the volume of polymer network may accelerate water and drug diffusion from/within the matrix. Thus, it is a misconception that the 3D printing process will always retard drug release based on increased tablet hardness. Hardness, porosity, density, solid-state of the drug, SA/V, weight, and formulation components are all factors contributing to the release profile where the total balance can either slow down or accelerate the release profile.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Original language

English

Article number

1335

Pages from-to (Number of pages)

Pages 1335

Journal (Volume, Issue Number)

Biomedicines (Volume 10, Issue 6)

Publication milestones

  • Accepted/In press - 31/05/2022
  • Published - 06/06/2022

Publication status

Published - 06/06/2022

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/625431
  • Scopus: 85132165957

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