Sebastian-Paul Kopp: Custom-made 3D-printed medication

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Sebastian with a 3D-printed pill.

The research focus of Sebastian-Paul Kopp is laser-based 3D printing from polymer powders. As described earlier, he uses a technique similar to a common laser printer to individually deposit the powder onto the laser bed.

In his subsequent work, he successfully adapted his setup to 3D-print custom-made medication. As a proof of concept, he fabricated several pills containing e.g. paracetamol and caffeine. As he writes in his recent publication Electrophotographic 3D printing of pharmaceutical films, he was able to combine multiple ingredients in one pill. This opens the path to medicine that is individually tailored to the patient’s needs.

Sebastian works at Bayerisches Laserzentrum (blz), his supervisor is Michael Schmidt. The original publication can be found in Additive Manufacturing.

Different medical powders (left) like paracetamol are 3D-printed into one pill (middle), which is tailored to the individual patient’s needs (right).