Speed it up, slow it down…An issue of bicalutamide release from 3D printed tablets.

The article describes the preparation and characterization of 3D-printed tablets with bicalutamide obtained using two-material co-extrusion-based fused deposition modeling (FDM). This method is a modification of typical two-material FDM where separate nozzles are used to print from two filaments. In this work we used a ZMorph® 3D printer with DualPro printhead which allows us to co-extrude two filaments through a single nozzle. This approach gives the opportunity to modify tablet properties in a wide range, especially the dissolution rate, by producing dosage forms with a complex design. The great advantage of this method is that switching between immediate dosage form and controlled release does not require any change in the 3D-printer set-up. We checked the accuracy of co-extrusion printing simply by weighing the amounts of soluble and insoluble material in the printed object as well as calculating the volumes of the printed objects from micro computed tomography (µ-CT) images. We printed several tablets with a different design including simple one-material tablets, two- and three-compartment tablets with various internal structure and composition of the printing path. The dissolution tests were conducted in sink and non-sink conditions. We obtained tablets with desired bicalutamide dissolution profiles, i.e. immediate, controlled, and combined. The formation of spatial matrix slows down the dissolution in controlled and combined release bicalutamide tablets what was confirmed by µ-CT analysis before and after dissolution.