Personalised Adaptive Medicine

Introduction

Personalised drug formulation is a hot topic, but state-of-the-art approaches are limited by low scalability, cost, and regulatory hurdles. Current polypill formulation efforts are hindered by liquid form or hot melt addition approaches, posing stability issues.

Societal Impact

These bottlenecks carry a great societal price. The synergic boost of drug combinations has recently been demonstrated to reach significant improvement in treatment outcomes. Keeping active substances in the ideal physiological concentration window is known to maximize efficiency and reduce side effects.

Additionally, polypharmacy is a real problem leading to:

1. Dosing errors
2. Significant loss in patient adherence

Data Challenges

While Big Data Health IT system concepts on the far horizon hold potential to gather the large amount of reliable dosage-patient data required for evidence-based personalised medicine, the technology to deliver such data is missing. This includes well-tracked patient/dosing procedures with bi-directional digital information flow.

Proposed Solution

The PERAMEDIC project proposes to resolve these problems with a breakthrough solution: a stand-alone drug formulation system for personalised medicine. This system will offer locally prepared, individually customised, segmented release polypills, with an inherently digital technology interface.

Technology Integration

The system relies on integrating several novel technologies:

• Personal release profiles
• In situ 3D printing of release matrix using adaptive toolpaths
• Ultra-precise multichannel powder dosing of drugs into sealed microcompartments

Application Scenarios

The envisaged device would be a desktop-size pill/capsule printing machine, using canisters of powdered drugs and bioresorbable polymer matrix material. Application scenarios would include:

1. First clinical settings
2. Later stages in pharmacy locations
3. Medical practices such as GP’s offices

Project Outcome

PERAMEDIC will deliver a lab-scale proof-of-concept prototype system of the functionally combined novel technologies, along with a preview design of the future technology.