Three-Dimensional Printing of Oral Dosage Forms: Current Technologies and Regulatory Outlook

Three-dimensional printing builds a dosage form layer by layer from a digital design, which makes it attractive for personalised doses, complex release profiles and small-batch production. This mini review, which reports no new data, summarises published work on printing technologies used for oral products, namely extrusion-based, vat photopolymerisation, powder-bed and inkjet methods, together with materials, clinical applications, quality control and regulation. The literature shows that every major technology can yield tablets or printlets with controlled release, but most examples are laboratory demonstrations using a few model drugs. Regulatory pathways for point-of-care production are not settled, and analytical methods suited to individually produced doses remain under development.