 |
| Condensed drug films |
University
of Michigan have developed a way to print pure medication, without any solvent,
in various combination which could one day result into pharmacies printing
drugs to fill prescription onsite, as per individual requirement.
The
technique was developed at University of Michigan and the research paper
published September 27, 2017 in Journal of Nature Communications.
There is a
huge unmet need of developing, alternative drug delivery systems that are precise, quick
and deliver the drugs directly to the site. In this paper, the researchers make
use of solvent-free organic vapor jet printing to deposit micronized and nano-structured
thin film of drugs on skin and buccal patches or ingestible strips or any other
structure.
This
technique improves the dissolution kinetics of active pharmaceutical
ingredients (APIs),which increases the efficacy and bioavailability. The new
method uses organic vapor jet printing (OVJP), in which the compound is
thermally evaporated to mix with inert gas ( Nitrogen) followed by condensing
the gas mixture onto cooled substrate, where the organic material condenses.
The process
is controlled so that the shape, thickness and morphology of resulting film can
be regulated.
The process
does not change the chemical properties or stability of the drug. They have
experimented with 6 common drugs caffeine, paracetamol, ibuprofen, tamoxifen,
BAY 11-7082 and fluorescein.
It was shown
that the pure, printed tamoxifen destroyed cultured breast and ovarian cancer cells in vitro as
effectively as medication delivered by traditional means. The advantage was the
new system did not use any solvent or other compounds that pharma company use
to lend stability to the drug.
Max Shtein, professor of materials science and
engineering said, “A doctor or pharmacist can choose any number of medications,
which the machine would combine into a single dose. The machine could be
sitting in the back of the pharmacy or even in a clinic.”
"Pharma
companies have libraries of millions of compounds to evaluate, and one of the
first tests is solubility," Shtein said. "About half of new compounds
fail this test and are ruled out. Organic vapor jet printing could make some of
them more soluble, putting them back into the pipeline."
While
printing drugs for mass market might be years away, the immediate use of this
technique can be in drug testing, drug developing and evaluating the drugs for
human use.
Watch a
video about the technique
No comments:
Post a Comment