Medicines such as tablets or capsules usually come off the production lines of pharmaceutical companies in large quantities with a standardized mode of action. This can be problematic for patients who require specially tailored medication – for example, people with cancer, children or older people who need different dosages.
3D printing can help here: By printing with polymer drug filaments, medicines can be tailored more appropriately to different patients. For our video report, we visited the start-up goatAM, which was founded at Cologne University of Applied Sciences and aims to commercialize a printing technology for pharmaceuticals.
Tilmann Spitz, CEO of goatAM, explains why the individual dosing of medicines in 3D printing makes sense. He talks about the challenges involved in developing the process and how he and his team solved them.
Dr. Julian Quodbach from the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Utrecht University talks about polymers, their properties and how they influence the release of drugs. What is special about this application of 3D printing is that the printed form can also increase the success of the therapy.
The third partner in the project is the pharmaceutical company Merck Healthcare KGaA. Dr. Simon Geißler has been working on polymers for 3D printing. He and his team want to ensure that the effect of the drugs is not altered or restricted by processing in the printing process.
Source: COMPAMED-tradefair.com
