A new way of printing medicine on the outside of pills could potentially create safer, faster-acting medicines and bring new drugs to market faster.
“Some active ingredients can be dissolved in a liquid, which then behaves like normal ink, so then the process is fairly straightforward,” explains Nik Kapur, an engineering professor at the University of Leeds.
“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.”