Additive Manufacturing's Application in Pharma and Biotech

Additive manufacturing allows pharma and biotech companies to take advantage of 3D printing technology to produce medications in a variety of dosages while achieving reliably consistent results. A major benefit of the process is the speed in which its able to produce a prototype and then shift to broad manufacturing.

Aprecia Pharmaceuticals is one of the key manufacturers using this technology. Aside from this, the company is also a 100% US-based manufacturer, which provides them with a unique benefit in the current ecosystem.

In April of this year, President Trump announced 100% tariffs on imported branded medications (with exceptions made for specific countries that negotiated their own tariff agreements). This is part of an ongoing push from President Trump to bring manufacturing back to the United States across all industries, including the pharma industry.

Kyle Smith, president and chief operating officer at Aprecia, spoke with Pharmaceutical Executive about the company’s additive manufacturing process as well as the benefits and challenges of 100% US-based manufacturing.

Pharmaceutical Executive: How is additive manufacturing applied in pharma and biotech?
Kyle Smith: Aprecia has a unique 3D printing technology based on binder jet 3D printing. It's a powder liquid process, and we use our technology to develop and manufacture unique dosage forms, and to do that rapidly.

Obviously, there's a lot of time pressure from folks in pharmaceutical and biotech industries now to develop products to the market more rapidly. There's a very competitive landscape in a lot of these disease states, so we're trying to provide that edge to our partners to develop patient-friendly dosage forms, products that are difficult to develop and manufacture with traditional manufacturing technologies, and to do that in a rapid environment.

Obviously, 3D printing was originally known as more of a rapid prototyping technology, and we've taken that rapid prototyping nature and applied that to development manufacturing. We're able to quickly develop proof of concept and do some feasibility work to show that a molecule can work on the platform.

We’re developing a near final dosage form, so it's a really patient-friendly dosage form that's ideal for both administrating the product, if you're a caregiver, or for the patient to actually take the product. We're able to provide this unique, really beneficial dosage form, do it quickly, and do it in, obviously, a CGMP compliant way with our technology.