Abstract
Film-coating is widely applied in pharmaceutics to enhance aspect/taste and mechanical properties of dosage forms, to protect them from the environment and to modify their release performance. In this respect, a film-coating process was recently involved in the development of 4D printed prolonged-release systems intended for organ retention. During coating processes, liquid formulations are sprayed onto moving cores, whose shape, weight and surface characteristics are essential to attain a homogeneous film. Devices of complex shapes, composed of smart materials and fabricated by hot-processing techniques, such as extrusion and fused deposition modeling 3D printing, might be poorly compatible with the requirements of traditional coating methods, e.g., need for spherical substrates with smooth surface and stable under process temperatures. This work was aimed at evaluating, at a small scale level, the feasibility of a versatile equipment for film-coating of rod-shaped extruded and printed prototypes with different section. Equipment design and set up of process parameters were performed starting from polymeric solutions and suspensions and selecting as cores 50 mm-long rod-shaped samples based on shape memory poly(vinyl alcohol). Integrity and thickness of the applied layer and its impact on shape memory and release performance of prototypes were investigated.
Highlights
Accessibility of manufacturing techniques based on hot-processing and availability of smart polymers has opened new possibilities in pharmaceutics, the most interesting ones regarding 4D printing [1,2,3,4,5,6]
Self-expanding systems based on pharmaceutical-grade poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) and fabricated by hot melt extrusion (HME) and fused deposition modeling (FDM), involving 4D printing, were proposed for intravesical and intragastric applications [8,9,10]
Prototypes were conceived in an original shape (e.g., U, S- and helix-like) with such a spatial encumbrance that their rapid emptying from the target organ could be avoided, ensuring long-lasting residence and release
Summary
Accessibility of manufacturing techniques based on hot-processing and availability of smart polymers (e.g., materials changing their shape/characteristics in response to an external stimulus) has opened new possibilities in pharmaceutics, the most interesting ones regarding 4D printing [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Self-expanding systems based on pharmaceutical-grade poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) and fabricated by hot melt extrusion (HME) and fused deposition modeling (FDM), involving 4D printing, were proposed for intravesical and intragastric applications [8,9,10]. In the development of these organretentive PVA-based systems, film-coating was taken into account in order to improve their mechanical properties and prolong the release duration, without affecting the shape memory effect
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