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Printing Drugs onto Nails for Effective Treatment of Onychomycosis

Pollard, Thomas D; Bonetti, Margherita; Day, Adam; Gaisford, Simon; Orlu, Mine; Basit, Abdul W; Murdan, Sudaxshina; (2022) Printing Drugs onto Nails for Effective Treatment of Onychomycosis. Pharmaceutics , 14 (2) , Article 448. 10.3390/pharmaceutics14020448. Green open access

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Abstract

Inkjet printing (IJP) is an emerging technology for the precision dosing of medicines. We report, for the first time, the printing of the antifungal drug terbinafine hydrochloride directly onto nails for the treatment of onychomycosis. A commercial cosmetic nail printer was modified by removing the ink from the cartridge and replacing it with an in-house prepared drug-loaded ink. The drug-loaded ink was designed so that it was comparable to the commercial ink for key printability properties. Linear drug dosing was shown by changing the lightness of the colour selected for printing (R2 = 0.977) and by printing multiple times (R2 = 0.989). The drug loads were measured for heart (271 µg), world (205 µg) and football (133 µg) shapes. A disc diffusion assay against Trpytophan rubrum showed inhibition of fungal growth with printed-on discs. In vitro testing with human nails showed substantial inhibition with printed-on nails. Hence, this is the first study to demonstrate the ability of a nail printer for drug delivery, thereby confirming its potential for onychomycosis treatment.

Type: Article
Title: Printing Drugs onto Nails for Effective Treatment of Onychomycosis
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.3390/pharmaceutics14020448
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmaceutics14020448
Language: English
Additional information: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third-party material in this article are included in the Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Keywords: Point-of-care; onychomycosis; inkjet printing; personalized healthcare; antifungal treatment; pharmaceutical 2D printing; desktop printing; printed drug products; precision pharmaceuticals
UCL classification: UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > UCL School of Pharmacy > Pharmaceutics
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > UCL School of Pharmacy
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10144253
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