In the drug delivery area, versatile therapeutic systems intended to yield customized combinations of drugs, drug doses and release kinetics have drawn increasing attention, especially because of the advantages that personalized pharmaceutical treatments would offer. In this respect, a previously proposed capsular device able to control the release performance based on its design and composition, which could extemporaneously be filled, was improved to include multiple separate compartments so that differing active ingredients or formulations may be conveyed. The compartments, which may differ in thickness and composition, resulted from assembly of two hollow halves through a joint also acting as a partition. The systems were manufactured by fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printing, which holds special potential for product personalization, and injection molding (IM) that would enable production on a larger scale. Through combination of compartments having wall thickness of 600 or 1200 μm, composed of promptly soluble, swellable/erodible or enteric soluble polymers, devices showing two-pulse release patterns, consistent with the nature of the starting materials, were obtained. Systems fabricated using the two techniques exhibited comparable performance, thus proving the prototyping ability of FDM versus IM.

在药物输送领域，旨在产生药物，药物剂量和释放动力学的定制组合的通用治疗系统引起了越来越多的关注，特别是由于个性化药物治疗将提供的优势。在这方面，先前提出的能够基于其设计和组成来控制释放性能的胶囊剂被改进为包括多个单独的隔室，从而可以输送不同的活性成分或制剂，所述胶囊剂可以被临时填充。隔室的厚度和成分可能有所不同，这是由于两个中空半部通过一个也用作隔板的接头组装而成的。这些系统是通过熔融沉积建模（FDM）3D打印制造的，该产品具有个性化产品的特殊潜力，注塑成型（IM）可以实现更大的生产规模。通过将壁厚为600或1200μm的隔室进行组合，该隔室由速溶，可溶胀/易蚀或肠溶性聚合物组成，制得的器件显示出与起始原料的性质一致的两脉冲释放模式。使用这两种技术制造的系统表现出可比的性能，从而证明了FDM的原型制作能力与IM。