Making a tablet instantaneously for a patient according to his/her ailment or combining multiple pills in a single tablet aren’t fictional anymore. For researchers of the National University of Singapore(NUS) have developed a new method for tablet fabrication which is simple and relatively inexpensive.

The making of a game changer

The idea of personalized tablets has remained just an idea for long because it was too complex and expensive, according to assistant professor Siow Ling Soh. He adds that the new method is a game changer. It can be used by doctors to create tablets in individualized settings and also in mass production by pharmaceutical companies.

Rather than creating drug tablet by printing each layer one after the other, the tablet which the researchers in Singapore designed has three different components, one of them being a polymer that contains the drug.

The novel system eases the doctor’s job since she only has to draw the desired release profile in a software. This will create the required template for making the tablets relevant to the patient. Using the template, it’s then easy to produce the tablets using a 3D printer.
This easy-to-use system does not require complex computation for whenever a release profile is needed.

The researchers say that the system which is completely customizable can generate a template for any release profile. This makes it so relevant since it’s often important in drug delivery to administer more than one type of drug into the patient’s body at the same time.

The new method can be enhanced to include different types of drugs in the same tablet. Also, it’s possible for every drug to be released at various rates from within the same tablet.

In other words, possibilities abound.

With inputs from the Times of India

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