Three-Dimensional Printing Technology in Drug Design and Development: Feasibility, Challenges, and Potential Applications.

Background/objectives: The present investigation evaluates the impact of 3D-printing technology on the design of pharmaceutical drugs, considering the feasibility issues and problems concerning technological, pharmaceutical, and clinical matters. This paper aims to review how 3D printing can modify the traditional manufacturing of drugs with personalized medicine-therapy outcomes being individualized and optimized, hence improving patients' compliance.

Methods: The historical development of 3D printing from rapid prototyping to advanced pharmaceutical applications is discussed.

Holodiagrams in birefringent media.

The modifications to the holodiagram concept to describe free propagation (the extraordinary ray) inside birefringent materials are described. Holodiagrams are graphs showing the loci where the sum or the difference in the optical path from a generic point to two foci is the same. The holodiagrams obtained in this way give the shape of the surfaces that satisfy Fermat's principle, conjugate by reflection of one focus into the other, and represent the interference fringes obtained if both points are coherent sources.