Assessment of extrusion process of drug-loaded filaments for 3D printing: metformin and AffinisolTM

3D printing technology enables the design of new drug delivery systems using polymers which can be molten. Most studies dealing with drug-loaded filaments report two main situations: in the first one, drugs and excipients melting points are similar, whereas in the second one drug melting point is much higher than excipient melting point. For this second case, we have studied some parameters of blends related with the extrusion process. Moreover, some parameters of drug-loaded filaments, containing metformin as model drug and a HPMC as main carrier, were also studied to know their printability