drug off the printer

Heidelberg University Hospital is testing the technology of the start-up Digital Health Systems. The aim is to enable more precise dosing of medications.

Heidelberg University Hospital has announced two clinical trials for drug printing from Ulm-based start-up Digital Health Systems. Feasibility and suitability will be tested on 24 volunteers.

According to its own information, Digital Health Systems has found a drug printing process in which the active ingredient is printed on yellow platelets. The idea is that this will allow drugs to be dosed more accurately - and, more importantly, smaller doses. This is currently not possible, or only possible with great difficulty, with tablets or suppositories. This poses a problem for children in particular, according to the medical experts. "While higher dosages can be easily achieved by multiple administrations, the challenges are particularly great when it comes to administering the smallest amounts, as commercially available dosage forms have to be divided or mortared, drops have to be counted or small volumes of liquid have to be precisely measured," explains Walter Haefeli, Medical Director of the Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacoepidemiology at the UKHD, who is leading the study. If the technique works as planned, it should be incorporated into routine clinical practice as soon as possible.

Two-dimensional printing of drugs works like an inkjet printer: the "ink" contains the dissolved drug. It is applied by the pharmaceutical printer to a postage stamp-thin platelet that is water-soluble and dissolves in the mouth. The aim is to investigate how well the body can absorb the drug as a result and how low doses can be taken using the technique.

"The vision of Digital Health Systems is to deliver a complete system for individual, personalized 2D and 3D printing of drugs," says CEO Christian Franken. "This includes not only the printers themselves, but the entire system of inks containing active ingredients, as well as the software." In the future, it will also be possible to combine multiple active ingredients.