Mechanically promoted lipid-based filaments via composition tuning for extrusion-based 3D-printing

Abstract

Lipid excipients are favorable materials in pharmaceutical formulations owing to their natural, biodegradable, low-toxic and solubility/permeability enhancing properties. The application of these materials with advanced manufacturing platforms, particularly filament-based 3D-printing, is attractive for personalized manufacturing of thermolabile drugs. However, the filament’s weak mechanical properties limit their full potential. In this study, highly flexible filaments were extruded using PG6-C16P, a lipid-based excipient belonging to the group of polyglycerol esters of fatty acids (PGFAs), based on tuning the ratio between its major and minor composition fractions.

Increasing the percentage of the minor fractions in the system was found to enhance the relevant mechanical filament properties by 50-fold, guaranteeing a flawless 3D-printability. Applying a novel liquid feeding approach further improved the mechanical filament properties at lower percentage of minor fractions, whilst circumventing the issues associated with the standard extrusion approach such as low throughput. Upon drug incorporation, the filaments retained high mechanical properties with a controlled drug release pattern. This work demonstrates PG6-C16 P as an advanced lipid-based material and a competitive printing excipient that can empower filament-based 3D-printing.

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Materials

The PGFA investigated in this work was PG6-C16 partial ester (PG6-C16 P), composed of six glycerol moieties partially esterified with palmitic acid, and commercially available as WITEPSOL® PMF166. The other materials used for composition tuning were MEF, free diglycerol (PG2), triglycerol (PG3), tetraglycerol (PG4), and hexaglycerol (PG6), consisting of two, three, four and six glycerol moieties connected with ether bonds, respectively. All materials were synthesized and provided by IOI OLEO

Moaaz Abdelhamid, Carolina Corzo, Ana Belén Ocampo, Mira Maisriemler, Eyke Slama, Carolina Alva, Dirk Lochmann, Sebastian Reyer, Tanja Freichel, Sharareh Salar-Behzadi, Martin Spoerk, Mechanically promoted lipid-based filaments via composition tuning for extrusion-based 3D-printing, International Journal of Pharmaceutics, Volume 643, 2023, 123279, ISSN 0378-5173, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpharm.2023.123279.

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