Doctoral defence: Laura Viidik “3D printing in pharmaceutics: a new avenue for fabricating therapeutic drug delivery systems“

On 15 March at 15:00 Laura Viidik will defend her doctoral thesis “3D printing in pharmaceutics: a new avenue for fabricating therapeutic drug delivery systems“.

Supervisors:
Associate Professor Ivo Laidmäe, University of Tartu
Associate Professor Karin Kogermann, University of Tartu
Professor Jyrki Tapio Heinämäki, University of Tartu

Opponent:
Professor Thomas De Beer, Ghent University (Belgium)

Summary
Precision medicine is an approach to enhance the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases to benefit a specific group of patients. Using this knowledge to select the most suitable active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and doses enables us to achieve the optimal therapeutic efficiency. Three-dimensional (3D) printing is an additive manufacturing technique that has been proposed as tool for the application of these principles. In 3D printing, previously designed model is then layer-by-layer formed into desired object. 3D printing methods differ from each other based on layer formation and can dictate additional material considerations. 3D printing has been studied since 1980s and has been widely used in medicine these previous years. In pharmaceutics, 3D printing can be seen as a possible aid for fabricating personalised drug delivery systems. In 2015 the first 3D printed medicine Spritam® was authorised. In this dissertation, micro-extrusion-based and fused deposition modelling 3D printing methods were used. Suitable active substance and excipient(s) formulations were designed for both methods. Polymers used were polyethylene oxide and polycaprolactone, active substances indomethacin and theophylline. As classical does development, so does the implementation of novel technologies need thorough knowledge of material and process characteristics. Therefore, bulk material properties such as viscosity, physical characteristics, suitability for filament extrusion etc, and final drug delivery system characteristics such as drug release, reaction to heat and radiation were studied. In addition, a novel method for evaluating the 3D printability was designed. We can conclude from the results of this work, that 3D printing promises great aid in developing novel drug delivery systems.

The defence will be held in Teams.