3D printing of medicines

About the project

We are building a technology platform that can have a major impact on human and animal health by providing user-friendly dosage forms that have the right dose of compounds that are often difficult to deliver, customised for the patient in need. This enables precision medicine approaches (from compound to formulation to dosage form), improves treatment outcomes, reduces the risk of incorrect dosing due to dosage form tampering (crushing, splitting, making slurry tablets) and makes dosing easier for healthcare professionals, carers and patients. A major advantage for Swedish patients is the availability of small batches for clinical trials, which significantly shortens the time to conduct clinical studies.

Our technology platform further reduces the burden of medicines on the environmental system by producing ‘just the right’ amount of medicines. Therefore, there are almost no residues reaching the wastewater system or being incinerated. This also reduces the need for raw materials, with a major impact throughout the pharmaceutical production chain (i.e. the environmental burden resulting from the synthesis of medicines and excipients used in medicines). It can also contribute to reduced contamination of the environment by antibiotics which therefore reduces the risk of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) development. Currently, we have a 3D printer from Curify Labs and are testing the production of both veterinary and human medicines in collaboration with the Faculty of Pharmacy and the Department of Engineering Physics, Materials Science at Ångstöm and Uppsala University Hospital.