Personalized medicine: An era of dosage form development

Dear Friends, Personalized medicine is based on the categorization of patients into several groups by means of practices, interventions, or dosage forms which are modified specifically for individual patient on their disease risk and expected response. Other terminology synonymies with personalized medicine are stratified medicine, precision medicine, and P4 medicine. Patient genetic content or any cellular or molecular analyses through diagnostic testing are the basis for individualization of dosage forms. Each human has an exclusive variation of genome. This advanced technology of personalized medicine is relied on testing of patient’s fundamental biology, DNA, RNA, or protein which helps in disease/disorder confirmation. The techniques comprise of are genome sequencing, RNA sequencing, etc. A genome-wide association study is conducted to investigate the link of disease with a mutation. This study will focus on the genome sequence study of one disease and then, genome sequence of many patients with that disease will be done. Customized drug delivery systems are the result of this concept. It involves three-dimensional (3D) printing which is connected to freeform fabrication techniques, namely, layer-by-layer technology of depositing materials (digitally controlled) to generate freeform geometries. Since many times, 3D printing has been a major part in producing the customized scaffolds in bone and tissue engineering. Now, this rapid prototyping technology has emerged in pharmaceutical sciences as well. Many 3D printing technologies such as stereolithographic, powder based, selective laser sintering, fused deposition modeling, and semi-solid extrusion has revolutionized the 3D printing. This technology facilitates the dosage form preparation with complex designs and geometries. Despite of enormous potential, still 3D bioprinting technique is facing a regulatory challenge to achieve its maximum potential in pharmaceutical industry.