Molding as Innovative Technology for Personalized Tablet Production

The future of dosage form design is expected to move towards the production of personalized dosage forms tailored to each patient. The 3D printer was introduced to solve that problem but is not easy to use in a pharmacy. Herein, a new 3D mold technology is adopted for tablet manufacturing. Preparation of amlodipine tablets was used as a Biopharmaceutics Classification System Class 1 drug model to study this technology. Different concentrations of either starch or Avicel-based formulations and different concentrations of hydroxypropyl methylcellulose as a binder for mass formation were used. The mass formed for each formula was cast into the mold for tablet preparation. Different non-pharmacopeial and pharmacopeial quality-control tests of the prepared tablets by using the 3D mold were compared to a marketed tablet product of amlodipine. 3D-molded tablets showed compliance properties with the tablet pharmacopeial quality standard. Studying the equivalence of the 3D mold tablets to the brand marketed product under biowaiver conditions was carried out. The difference and similarity factors studies of molded tablets prepared using starch or Avicel as a filler and 2.5% of hydroxypropyl methylcellulose showed acceptable characters to the drug brand name. It is predicted that by using this simple technique, it would be possible to produce tablets with designed disintegration and release profiles, which could potentially allow the tailoring of the drug release and hence personalize the medicine for each patient.