Name: Tien-Jen Chang
Project Title: 3D printing of micro‐container for oral delivery of probiotics
Group: IDUN
Supervisor: Anja Boisen, En Te Hwu, Line Hagner Nielsen
Project Description:
Probiotics are healthy bacteria which can prohibit the damaging bacteria and thereby, improve the digestive system. When the probiotic reaches the large intestine, the treatment effect depends on its dispersion and amount seed in the intestinal mucus layer. In the project, we utilize microcontainers, a microscale oral delivery vehicle, to delivering probiotic. Although, the microcontainers offer unidirectional release directly to the intestinal epithelium, the symmetrical cylindrical shape makes the microcontainers randomly spread and release the probiotic in all directions. To reach optimization of delivery, through 3D printing lots of small complicated structure and geometry feature on the surface of the microcontainers, the adhesion force between the microcontainers and the mucus layer is expected to increase apparently. Hence, seeding of probiotics in the intestinal mucus layer will be increased by optimizing the geometry and shape to improve the adhesion condition.
Perspective:
The enhancive mucoadhesion microcontainers can be further used for increasing the absorption and thereby, the oral bioavailability of e.g. poorly water-soluble drugs. Simultaneously, to resolve the bottleneck of the current 3D printing manufacturing process, an HD-DVD optical pickup unit (OPU) will be utilized as the light source to build a homemade 3D high-resolution printer for manufacturing the microcontainers with the complicated microscale structures. The OPU printer achieves nanoscale printing resolution, which is better than every commercial stereolithography printer. This printer has great potential for new microscale application, such as drug delivery vessels, micro robotics, micro/nanofluidics, and micro optics.