Furqan A Maulvi, Manthal J Shah, Bosky S Solanki, Akanksha S Patel, Tejal G Soni and Dinesh O Shah
Three-dimensional printing (3DP) is a unique prototyping technology that has advanced over the past 35 years and has the great potential to revolutionize the field of drug delivery with its inherent advantages of customizability and the ability to fabricate complex solid dosage forms with high accuracy and precision. 3DP can fabricate solid dosage forms with variable densities and diffusivities, complex internal geometries, multiple drugs and excipients. Literature data suggest many benefits of the 3DP technology over the conventional technologies in the field of novel drug delivery system (NDDS). 3DP can successfully address the issues relating to the drug delivery of poorly water-soluble drugs, peptides, potent drugs and the release of multi-drugs, etc. However, there are some problems that restrict the applications of 3DP in commercial market, such as the selections of suitable binders, excipients and the pharmaco-technical properties of final products. Further advancement in process performance is required to overcome these issues where 3DP technology can be successfully combined with NDDS. Here we present an overview and the potential of 3DP in the progress of new drug delivery systems.
