Episode# 112 | Automating Compounding Pharmacies: Prof. Alvaro Goyanes, FabRx

You can learn a lot about the future of healthcare by watching how a single pill gets made. From a small office in London, we sit down with Prof Alvaro Goyanes, co-founder and CEO of FabRx, to unpack how 3D printed pharmaceuticals are turning personalized medicine from an idea into a working system. If you’ve ever wondered why patients still get forced into a handful of standard doses, this conversation shows what changes when medicine becomes software-driven and printable on demand. 

We talk about what FabRx is building, why they’ve stayed deeply research-led while pushing toward clinical application, and how partnerships with hospitals are translating 3D printing into real studies. We also get specific about the compounding pharmacy workflow: “pharma ink” syringes prepared ahead of time, doses selected in software, and tablets printed with controls that reduce manual steps and help cut inconsistency. It’s a practical look at personalized drug manufacturing for therapies that need flexible dosing across pediatrics, elderly care, hormones, and more. 

Quality is the backbone of everything here, so we dig into traceability, weighing each unit, pressure-sensing to catch extrusion problems early, camera systems that verify prints, and where AI inspection and near-infrared methods fit in. We zoom out to the policy layer, including the UK’s move toward distributed point-of-care manufacturing and how regulators in Europe and the US are beginning to shape guidance for 3D printing in pharmacies. Then we end on a wild but serious frontier: why NASA cares about printing medicines in space, where supply chains and gravity don’t cooperate. 

If you care about personalized medicine, 3D printing in healthcare, and the future of compounding pharmacies, hit subscribe, share this with a friend in pharma or medtech, and leave a review telling us what application you want to see next.

About Our Guest: 

Alvaro Goyanes is the co-founder and CEO of FABRX, the first company dedicated to developing 3D printing technology for the fabrication of personalized medicines and medical devices. He is also an Honorary Associate Professor at University College London- School of Pharmacy (UK) and an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain).
A pioneer in the field, Alvaro was among the first researchers to explore the potential of 3D printing for manufacturing oral dosage forms and medical devices. Recognized as a world expert in 3D-printed medicines, he has been listed among the World's Most Highly Influential Researchers by Web of Science for six consecutive years since 2019.
Alvaro holds a PhD in Pharmaceutics from the University of Santiago de Compostela and previously worked as a Registered Pharmacist for three years, giving him firsthand insight into the needs of community pharmacy.

Show notes: Coming soon

Transcript

FabRx Vision And Team

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hi there, welcome to the Lattice episode 112. I am your host, Dr. Jenny Chen. Guess what? I am on vacation in Europe and thought it would be a great time to check out FabRX. FabRX is a University College London spin-out and one of the top companies dedicated to 3D printed personalized pharmaceuticals. Check out my conversation with Professor Alvaro Gorenas, the co-founder and CEO of FabRX, and get some updates in the world of 3D printed drugs. Please listen to the disclaimer at the end of this podcast. Hey guys, guess where I am? I am in London, the headquarters or the brain part of a company called FAPRX, which is a 3D printed pharmaceutical startup in London out of UCL. So I'm in the co-founder of FAPRX, Professor Avaro Goarnez office. So, first of all, uh why don't you introduce yourself and the company a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Yeah, thank you. Very nice to meet you in London. I know you personally, yeah. Well, my name is Alvaro Boyanes. I'm a pharmacist by training. I'm originally from Spain, but I moved to London 14 years ago, uh just for one year postdoc, but now it's 14. Uh I'm one of the co-founders of the company, and I'm also an associate professor in a university in Spain in Santiago de Compostela. So I spend part of my time in Spain and part in London and part traveling around. So my passion is technology, uh, science, healthcare, and 3D printing combines everything because we have software, hardware, uh, development of medicines, and this is how we started myself with the other two co-founders, Professor Abdul Basid, that is actually the owner of this space, it's not me. And uh and the co-founder, uh, his professor in the UCL, and uh Bill Lindsay, Dr. Bill Lindsay, who is uh part of the UCL business uh and helping all the business part of the company. So we had a vision and we tried to make this vision a reality. And our vision is that we can make medicines personalized using a 3D print.

Clinical Partnerships And US Launch

SPEAKER_00 2:27

And you guys have been around for almost a decade, is that right? And you have published more than a hundred papers. So lost count, actually, technically speaking. But what what are the latest news out of that RX from partnership to clinical trials to publications lately?

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Yeah, well, we are very active uh doing research, and many people think like we are too researchy because we we publish a lot, hundreds of articles, and our partners and collaborators that they publish a lot as well. So we love research, and this is part of our academic background. Uh, but we are really focused on uh application and clinical application. So we have partnerships with uh many hospitals around the world, basically. Uh I would highlight uh France, Spain, uh, Canada, the US. So we have many interesting clinical studies with uh different drugs, chemotherapy drugs, uh, pediatric medicines, uh elderly medicines, um, and also partnerships. We are very excited to start uh introducing our product in the US, in compounding pharmacies with our partner uh Pitpharma. Pit Pharma is a company based in Arizona in Phoenix, and they are real experts in compounding, and they are experts about the needs of compounding pharmacies. So we partner together to introduce our product, the Medimaker one. Uh, and right now we have many pharmacies in the US that are uh using our product. They are manufacturing, not manufacturing, because it's compounding, compounding medicines to give these medicines to the people, and thanks to Pit Pharma.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

And so bringing up uh compound medicine is a very interesting topic because lately there are a lot of FDA regulation about GLP, one drug, and compound medicine. How does your company, the 3D printing process, help these companies, this industry, compound medicine?

SPEAKER_01 4:32

So our printer helps uh compounding uh to automate compounding. One of the problems of compounding is that it's a manual process. So you have a technician preparing stuff, uh, and sometimes there are errors because humans uh make mistakes. So with 3D printing, we avoid that. Uh we can prepare what we call the pharma ink, and at the beginning of the month, you prepare these pharma ink uh syringes and you can store them, but then during the month, whenever you need to prepare your medication, uh medications for your patients, uh progesterone, T3, T4, Naltrexon, whatever drug, you just take the syringe, you put it in the printer, select the doses and print. It's something similar concept to the Nespresso coffee machine that you have your capsules, yeah, you take the capsule, put it in the capsule, in the coffee machine, and you get your coffee. So this is what the compounding pharmacists are doing now. And since our system is controlled by software and has a balance under the bill plate, we know the weight of each individual tablets so we can assure the quality of the medicines. And and that's the the best selling point. We save time, but also we increase the quality of the medicines.

Quality Control And Traceability Stack

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Yeah. I I think one of the problems with counting medicine is the inconsistency because it's a manual process. So with the digital process, you know, you have more controllable processes. And I actually was just in the lab, actually saw some part of your quality control process. Do you want to just expand on that a little bit? How do you guys ensure every you know pill or whatever that comes out is actually consistent with what they wanted?

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Yeah, so the the main part of uh our printing system is uh traceability. So you know exactly which materials you are using under which conditions, with which parameters, so everything is consistently done. So you follow the same protocol that is in the software, and that solves 95% of the problems. Then if there is a potential error, like uh, I don't know, the needle block or something, we have a pressure sensor. So you know that what you are extruding is under the right pressure, there are no problems in mixing, consistency, whatever. So we have the pressure sensor that is uh critical to identify the problems even before printing. And then when the medicine is printed, we weight each individual tablet or capsule so we know that if there is a variation in weight, we can remove that tablet or that capsule and we avoid the problems. So uh also we have a camera system that identifies that we are printing in the right way. Okay. This is uh something additional. Uh, and now with the use of AI, this is fantastic because it can identify if there are problems in one of the blisters. So, and we are always evolving. So we are always improving uh and making the system better. So I would say balance, pressure sensor, uh camera, and then for more research projects, NIR near infrared, that is a technology based on light that is able to identify the amount of drug inside the tablet. Not only the weight of the whole tablet, but the amount of drug, the dose inside the tablet. That's uh more expensive equipment, so it's not in daily practice, but it's something that we use for research a lot.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

So people who buy a printer right now can get the camera, the weight, and the pressure sensor.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Yeah, that's included with any printer.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

And obviously, the software stack behind it.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

And the software, exactly. With all the formulations and all the protocols to make the medicines.

Hydroxyurea Case Study In Pediatrics

SPEAKER_00 8:25

Yeah, I was very impressed with the breadth of uh APIs that you guys handle or in research, including HRTs, the hydrocortis for people with adrenal glide abnormalities, cancer. Um, and you mentioned that you guys just published a paper on hydrouria for pediatric cancer care for uh in Canada. You want to talk a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_01 8:49

Yeah, this is uh um the drug is hydroxurea. Uh I was not really not a pharmaceutical. That the name of the drug sometimes are scary. So this drug, I I was not aware about this drug before starting the project, but uh we have a partnership with um hospital in Montreal and University of Montreal in Canada, and they said we have a need, we want to make uh medicines, chewable medicines for patients, pediatric patients that need hydroxuria. Uh the drug is a chemotherapy product, uh, so it's not easy to handle, and we need to personalize the dose. So uh one of the team members, John, came to Spain, where we have most of our research facilities in Santiago de Compostela, spent time with us, developed formulations for that specific drug, and then uh they tested back in Canada the drug uh compared to the standard treatment that is another type of compounded medicine. Uh in this case, they started testing in dogs uh bioavailability and check that the safety of the medicine was good. Uh, and this is a very exciting project because they are solving a real issue for patients. And this is why we founded the company. The company we founded to implement these uh solutions into the clinic. And this is uh for us fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

So, how many patients do you think you're actually helping so far?

SPEAKER_01 10:21

Uh this is something that I don't really know because we we have many partners, we have hundreds of printers out there in hospitals, pharmacies, pharmaceutical companies. Uh pharmaceutical companies are very secretive. We don't really know what they do. Sometimes they ask questions when they they want uh advice. So we don't know the number of customers or or projects they are involved in. In hospitals, we we have more than 20 clinical studies with uh high number of patients, and then in pharmacies, this is standard practice. So they are tra uh uh making compounding medicines for hundreds or thousands of patients. So there is a big number of patients.

Scale And Patient Impact

SPEAKER_00 11:06

So you definitely have already impacted at least that number of patients directly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's very cool. And uh, I think I want to wrap up with something that we don't usually talk about, which is policies. And sometimes a policy drives innovation. And uh there is a new policy, just UK, focusing on point-of-care pharmaceuticals. Do you want to expand on that?

Policy Shift Toward Point Of Care

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Yeah, so a couple of years ago or one year ago, a UK changed or broke new regulation that is called um distributed uh uh point-of-care or modular manufacturing. So 3D printing uh enters in this category of modular manufacturing. Uh, and this new regulation would allow uh any company to manufacture medicines in hospitals or decentralized facilities in a much easier way without the need to get a GMP license for each manufacturing site. So it means that we are going to have a centralized facility that is going to be inspected and needs to be GMP, but then the manufacturing sites around this centralized facility that could be hundreds of miles away are not going to be inspected, could be inspected, but they don't need to be GMP facilities. So that simplifies a lot the process and uh offers clear guidelines about how this is going to be this is going to be implemented in the UK. This is really new uh and and it's last year or something? Yeah, I think it was last year in in July or June. Yeah. Probably. Yeah. So it's something new. It's not really no companies are using this for production right now because it takes time to uh check all these documents and everything, but but it's great. And also uh last month the European agency uh shared a document about questions and answers for 3D printing that is also a really interesting document.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

So yeah, I mean you're usually Europe is behind in the United States, but I feel like this is actually ahead of the time here.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

Well, not sure. Um the USP, the US Pharmacopoeia, the that is the company regulating somehow the compounding is ahead as well. Uh they have uh printers uh and actually they have I should I should brush up my knowledge in this area. No, but it's interesting because actually uh last week they share an open position that is in LinkedIn because they are hiring people with uh they require people with 3D printing experience because they are actually embracing a lot of this technology and they want to develop uh guidelines for 3D printing in in pharmacies under compounding regulation. So it's moving. And also the FDA as well. So we can not forget that the yeah the first 3D printed medicine was manufactured in the US, approved by the FDA, the company Aprecia.

Printing Medicines For Space Missions

SPEAKER_00 14:03

That is true, that is true. That is also past webinars we have featured them as well sometimes. They are the pioneers, so very exciting time for you guys. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

And uh we have this here, and now that I see this, this is uh Bootlighier.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

We have an article that is called To Infinity and Beyond, how to print medicines in outer space. Uh, and we have conversations with NASA. Oh cool. Yeah, the uh because they want new methods to manufacture medicines when we go to other planets and outer space. And they are really interested in 3D printing because yeah, we are not going to have in in space a tableting machine that weighs like two tons.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

No, we need something small uh to make medicines for astronauts and also in microgravity environment, even in lower orbit, that's already a very worded problem to solve. So no, I get it. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Very exciting. So really exciting times ahead. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

Well, thank you very much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

Thank you. Uh I really appreciate uh you coming to visit us and welcome to to come whenever you want.

Closing And Disclaimer

SPEAKER_00 15:10

Yeah, that's my pleasure. Next time. Thank you. Thank you guys. This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The views expressed do not constitute medical or financial advice. The technologies and procedures discussed may not be commercially available or suitable for every case. Always consult with a licensed professional.