Insider | Eugene Borukhovich
New
possibilities in 3D printing may open up a whole new chapter of opportunities
for pharmaceutical research and bio-technology applications. There are a number
of ways it could be used — drug dosage forms, supporting delivery, or helping
to research cures. Let’s explore how that might work.
3D printing
has been around for many years; predominantly been used in manufacturing.
This type of printing, also called stereolithography, can create almost any object by fusing
different materials, layer by layer, to form a physical version of a digital 3D
image. Over the past 15 years, 3D printing has expanded into the healthcare
industry, where it’s used to create custom prosthetics and dental implants.
Now, there may be an opportunity to use it for personalized healthcare as well.
Pharmaceutical
drug research and development could be improved drastically by 3D printing.
Rather than printing objects made out of plastic or metal, imagine printing
pills or human organs and tissue. This would allow companies to test drugs much
more safely (and much cheaper). It seems to be within science’s reach — and
closer than ever.
Healthcare changes on the horizon
Compared to
other sectors, 3D printing technology has played a minor role in healthcare so
far. Experts assume that healthcare only accounted for 1.6 percent of all
investments made into the $700 million 3D printing industry. However, that
number is expected to grow to 21 percent over the next 10 years.
The latest
research shows an even more drastic development for health and medicine. Using
3D printing for medical applications could amount to a market value of $2.13
billion by 2020, says market research company MarketsandMarkets.com.
Applications such as dental implants have already been very successful
commercially: It’s assumed that around 50,000 custom-fit Invisalign braces are printed on a
daily basis.
Here
are four other ways 3D printing could change the pharmaceutical world
forever.
1. Personalized drug dosing
3D printing
could add a whole new dimension of possibilities to personalized medicine. In
its most simplistic form, the idea of experts and researchers is to produce personalized
3D printed oral tablets. Medical writer C. Lee Ventola has conducted extensive
research on this for her publication, “Medical Applications for
3D Printing: Current and Projected Uses.” She writes that personalized, 3D-printed
medications may serve particularly well for patients who respond to the same
drugs in different ways.
Additionally,
a doctor or a pharmacist would be able to use each patient’s individual information
— such as age, race and gender — to produce their optimal medication dose,
rather than relying on a standard set of dosages. 3D printing may also allow
pills to be printed in a complex construct of layers, using a combination of
drugs to treat multiple ailments at once. The idea is to give patients one
single pill that offers treatment for everything they need.
2. Unique dosage forms
3D printing
could also be used to create unique dosage forms in the pharmaceutical
production process. In the process, the idea would be to use inkjet-based 3D
printing technology to create limitless dosage forms. According to experts, it is likely that this could challenge
conventional drug fabrication. The process to create novel dosage forms has
already been tested for many drugs, and we will only witness more innovation as
time moves on.
3. More complex drug release profiles
Drug release
profiles explain how a drug is broken down when taken by the patient. Designing
and printing drugs firsthand makes it much easier to understand their release
profiles. 3D printing makes it possible to print personalized drugs that
facilitate targeted and controlled drug release by printing a binder onto a
matrix powder bed in layers. This creates a barrier between the active ingredients, allowing
researchers to study the variations of the release more closely. As drug
manufacturers start to understand the full set of opportunities allowing them
to make more effective drugs, there will likely be more research and investment
into this area in the coming years.
4. Printing living tissue
While it’s
not likely that this will possible on a full scale anytime soon, experts
project that science is less than 20 years away from a fully functioning 3D printed heart.
But for now, 3D is still challenged by intricate nature of vascular networks.
According to Tony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative
Medicine, each organ presents a different level of complexity. So while some
tissue would be much easier to print — such as flat structures, like human skin
— the most difficult areas in organ printing are the heart, liver and kidneys.
Bio-printing
startup BioBots hopes to replace large, complex legacy devices and deploy
small, low-cost desktop 3D printers to print living cells. Co-founder Danny
Cabrera explains that their devices
can be used to build 3D living tissue models using human cells. His pitch also explains how his
company’s printers can be used to develop compounds for clinical settings,
which he says includes existing sales channels for the pharmaceutical industry.
What will happen next?
There’s
still some barriers in place before 3D printing can become a common healthcare
practice. For one, the sheer scale of investment required is a deterrent for
many companies who would otherwise want to experiment. Additionally, according
to Ventola, the concept of printing drugs is often simplified in the media and
underestimates the amount of money and time it takes to see an application
actually implemented. The public is left expecting innovations that can’t
possibly be realized on a large scale.
There are
also safety and security concerns. Because the technology is still so new,
there’s a lack of regulation of 3D printing. Ventola writes that the existence
of so-called “garage
biology” could lead to innovations in
the life science sector. These kind of operations are often conducted in secret
to avoid interference from law enforcement, though the research is still
technically legal.
Scientists
have begun to understand the multiple opportunities 3D printing presents for
the healthcare industry. While it’s something that still needs a lot of work,
Ventola thinks it’s only a matter of time before we get there. She writes,
“Although…the reality of printed organs is still some ways off, the progress
that has been made is promising.”
