Additive manufacturing technologies are considered as a potential way to support individualized pharmacotherapy due to the possibility of the production of small batches of customized tablets characterized by complex structures. We designed five different shapes and analyzed the effect of the surface/mass ratio, the influence of excipients, and storage conditions on the disintegration time of tablets printed using the fused deposition modeling method. As model pharmaceutical active ingredients (APIs), we used paracetamol and domperidone, characterized by different thermal properties, classified into the various Biopharmaceutical Classification System groups. We found that the high surface/mass ratio of the designed tablet shapes together with the addition of mannitol and controlled humidity storage conditions turned out to be crucial for fast tablet's disintegration. As a result, mean disintegration time was reduced from 5 min 46 s to 2 min 22 s, and from 11 min 43 s to 2 min 25 s for paracetamol- and domperidone-loaded tablets, respectively, fulfilling the European Pharmacopeia requirement for orodispersible tablets (ODTs). The tablet's immediate release characteristics were confirmed during the dissolution study: over 80% of APIs were released from printlets within 15 min. Thus, this study proved the possibility of using fused deposition modeling for the preparation of ODTs.

A Chełkowski Institute of Physics University of Silesia in Katowice ul 75 Pułku Piechoty 1 41 500 Chorzów Poland

Department of Analytical Chemistry University of Chemistry and Technology Prague Technická 5 166 28 Prague Czech Republic

Department of Pharmaceutical Technology and Biopharmaceutics Jagiellonian University Medical College Medyczna 9 30 688 Krakow Poland

Department of Pharmaceutical Technology Faculty of Pharmacy in Hradec Králové Charles University Akademika Heyrovského 1203 500 05 Hradec Králové Czech Republic

Department of Physics Faculty of Science University of Hradec Králové Rokitanského 62 500 03 Hradec Králové Czech Republic

Zentiva k s U Kabelovny 130 102 37 Prague Czech Republic

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