Can 3D printing of oral drugs help fight the current COVID-19 pandemic (and similar crisis in the future)?

ABSTRACT

The ongoing COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the importance of a robust drug supply chain which can be quickly and flexibly ramped up to produce life-saving drug treatments. 3D printing (3DP) of oral solid dosage forms (OSDF) could be a viable part of the emergency drug production response to support vulnerable patients in rural regions and other isolated locations. In the context of the current pandemic, the suitability of different 3DP technologies will depend on the physicochemical properties, unit dose strength and BCS classification of the repurposed drug compounds currently being trialed for COVID-19. Furthermore, the deployment strategy should focus on simplifying dosage forms and formulations, scaling down the size and complexity of the printing systems and real-time quality assurance via process analytical technologies (PAT).

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• SARS-CoV-2
• coronavirus
• three-dimensional printing
• oral solid dosage forms
• epidemic
• pandemic
• drug supply chain
• distributed manufacturing

Abbreviations

Three dimensional (3D); 3D printing (3DP); fused deposition modelling (FDM); selective laser sintering (SLS); oral solid dosage forms (OSDF); biopharmaceutics classification system (BCS); amorphous solid dispersion (ASD); continuous manufacturing (CM); quality control (QC); high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC); process analytical technology (PAT)

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the support of Varun Kushwah and Joana Pinto for preparing Table 1.

Declaration of interest

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose

Additional information

Funding

This work has been supported by the Austrian Competence Centres for Excellent Technologies (COMET) programme, operated by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology (BMVIT) and the Federal Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs (BMDW). Additional funding has also been provided by Land Steiermark and the Styrian Business Development Agency (SFG).