Supramolecular chemistry enables vat photopolymerization 3D printing of novel water-soluble tablets

Vat photopolymerization has garnered interest from pharmaceutical researchers for the fabrication of personalised medicines, especially for drugs that require high precision dosing or are heat labile. However, the 3D printed structures created thus far have been insoluble, limiting printable dosage forms to sustained-release systems or drug-eluting medical devices which do not require dissolution of the printed matrix. Resins that produce water-soluble structures will enable more versatile drug release profiles and expand potential applications.

To achieve this, instead of employing cross-linking chemistry to fabricate matrices, supramolecular chemistry may be used to impart dynamic interaction between polymer chains. In this study, water-soluble drug-loaded printlets (3D printed tablets) are fabricated via digital light processing (DLP) 3DP for the first time. Six formulations with varying ratios of an electrolyte acrylate monomer, [2-(acryloyloxy)ethyl]trimethylammonium chloride (TMAEA), and a co-monomer, 1-vinyl-2-pyrrolidone (NVP), were prepared to produce paracetamol-loaded printlets. ¹H NMR spectroscopy analysis confirmed the integration of TMAEA and NVP in the polymer, and residual TMAEA monomers were found to be present only in trace amounts (0.71 – 1.37 %w/w).

The apparent molecular mass of the photopolymerised polymer was found to exceed 300,000 Da with hydrodynamic radii of 15 – 20 nm, estimated based on ¹H DOSY NMR measurements The loaded paracetamol was completely released from the printlets between 45 minutes to 5 hours. In vivo single-dose acute toxicity studies in rats suggest that the printlets did not cause any tissue damage. The findings reported in this study represent a significant step towards the adoption of vat photopolymerization-based 3DP to produce personalised medicines.

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Jun Jie Ong, Georgina Chow, Simon Gaisford, Michael T. Cook, Thomas Swift, Richard Telford, Stephen Rimmer, Yujia Qin, Yang Mai, Alvaro Goyanes, Abdul W. Basit, Supramolecular chemistry enables vat photopolymerization 3D printing of novel water-soluble tablets, International Journal of Pharmaceutics, 2023, 123286, ISSN 0378-5173, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpharm.2023.123286.

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