(351f) Impingement of Printed Droplets Into Porous Medium: Rapid Manufacturing of Personalized Oral Dosages

Deposition of drug solution onto tablets utilizing Drop-on-Demand can be used to predict and manipulate final drug structure resulting in control of the disintegration of the drug delivery dosage form, API dissolution, and bioavailability in vivo.  Spreading and sorption of inkjet-printed droplets of ibuprofen and griseofulvin has been studied.  Small droplets of an aqueous solution (8.8 % w/w ibuprofen, ethanol, and ethylene glycol monoethyl ether) were deposited onto porous methylcellulose tablets compressed at 10kN, 15kN, and 20kN pressures. The wetting dynamics, spreading, and infiltration of the droplets were characterized to determine the effect on API dissolution profiles.  Mass transfer of the droplet was also examined to determine the coupling between the processes of the spreading, infiltration, and evaporation dynamics.  We observed that tablets compressed at higher pressures have greater sorption and decreased dissolution rates as compared to tablets compressed at lower pressures.  The sorption of the liquid into the tablet can be modeled by the evolution of the contact radius, R(t) and the penetration of the wetting front, h(t)  .