Printing faster-acting tablets

The process was developed to create safer and faster-acting medicines. According to Leeds University, it should also bring new drugs to market faster.

GSK has developed a way of printing active pharmaceutical ingredients onto tablets - but the process can only currently be applied to 0.5 per cent of all medicines used in tablet form. The researchers hope the new project will see this increase to 40 per cent.

’Some active ingredients can be dissolved in a liquid, which then behaves like normal ink, so then the process is fairly straightforward,’ said lead researcher Dr Nik Kapur from Leeds University’s Faculty of Engineering. ’However, when you’re working with active ingredients that don’t dissolve, the particles of the drug are suspended in the liquid, which creates very different properties and challenges for use within a printing system.

’For some tablets, you may also need higher concentrations of active ingredients to create the right dose and this will affect how the liquid behaves.’