###Non-destructive and high throughput quality control of 3D printed personalised medicines
Project ID: 2228bd1093 (You will need this ID for your application)
Research Theme: Healthcare Technologies
UCL Lead department: School of Pharmacy
Lead Supervisor: Abdul Basit
Project Summary:
3D printing (3DP) is a contemporary fabrication technique that has been touted as one of the enabling technologies of the era of personalised medicines. Pharmaceutical 3DP allows clinicians and pharmacists to tune the geometry, size, and dose of the medicinal product to a patient’s unique clinical need, promising enhanced clinical outcomes and reduced adverse effects. By optimising pharmaceutical treatment plans, 3DP could alleviate the estimated $528B annual avoidable cost and over 275,000 annual deaths due to non-optimised medication. We are currently collaborating with Gustav Roussey in Paris, which is Europe’s leading oncology hospital, and Great Ormond Street Hospital in London to evaluate 3DP in clinical settings. However, for feasible clinical deployment, quality control (QC) of 3DP medicinal products is essential. Traditional QC strategies, which are destructive, are not amenable to the 3DP process as each product is unique. As such, this project aims to engineer a non-destructive and high-throughput platform for real-time quality control and release of 3D printed medicinal products. The project will be split into two parts: Part 1) evaluation of near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR) for rapid evaluation of drug content in 3DP dosage forms and building computational models to improve measurement accuracy, and Part 2) integration of NIR probe into a GMP-ready 3D printer and enhancing throughput of batch release. Through the intersection of these two cutting edge technologies, pharmaceutical 3DP will accelerate towards clinical implementation, reducing healthcare costs and optimizing patient clinical outcomes.