The German chemical and pharmaceutical company Merck, headquartered in Darmstadt, will probably soon enter into a cooperation with the German-based specialist for 3D printing, Additive Manufacturing Customized Machines, or AMCM for short, and it’s subsidiary EOS, which stands for Electro Optical Systems. This is intended to make tablet production of the future more flexible, cheaper and faster, promises Isabel de Paoli, Chief Strategy Officer at the pharmaceutical company, which wants to revolutionize new tablet production. To this end, individualized solutions that can be tailored to each individual patient will also be incorporated into the production process. The first step, however, will be what is known as Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP), which as Good Manufacturing Practice defines the guidelines for quality assurance of the production processes and environment in the production of drugs, because „compliant tablet formulations“ and the manufacture of clinical trial products for medications in trials have top priority before committing to digital solutions on an industrial scale, Merck announces. In the clinical development phase, the so-called powder bed melting process has good chances of supporting a novel and simplified manufacturing process. A laser melts powdered starting products and materials and then welds them together layer by layer. The cooperation partner for 3D printing from Starnberg has the potential and know-how to produce drugs completely digitally, according to a Merck announcement.
