Sébastien Gallice is the president of the Pharmaciens des Préparatoires de France (PREF) and a community pharmacist in one of the largest compounding pharmacies in France, located in Marseille. He has honored us by answering our questions to share more about his position on the 3D printing of medicines.

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To begin, could you tell us a bit more about yourself?

Sébastien GALLICE – I am Sébastien Gallice, managing pharmacist of the pharmacie des Rosiers in Marseille. It is a somewhat unique pharmacy because we produce a huge number of compounding preparations, which means tailor-made medicines. And I am also the president of the PREF, a learned society whose objective is to promote and develop the proper use of these compounding preparations.

We will focus on your role as a community pharmacist. What might a typical day look like in a pharmacy like yours?

Sébastien GALLICE – We will talk about the compounding lab in particular. It starts with taking stock of the requests from my colleagues who entrust us with their compounding preparations, checking if we have the capacity to produce all of the requests, if we have all the molecules, and whether we are in a position to have released all the necessary batches. It is about ensuring that the entire team is present, because if we are running short-staffed we might experience some production delays. That is a typical day and how it begins. Then throughout the day, we will look at what the emergencies might be, or in any case, our capacity. Are we up to date, are we running behind, is the release of these preparations going well, in other words, do the finished products meet our expectations, along with very regular check-ins with my assistant pharmacists.

Tell us about compounding preparations in pharmacy. 

Sébastien GALLICE – Humans are the main driver behind these preparations. Starting with entering the prescription that has been entrusted to us, we will input it and transform it into a digital computer recipe, establish traceability around all of this, and then it is passed on to other pharmacy technicians who, thanks to their science, will manually manufacture these medicines, whether they are capsules, syrups, suppositories, ointments... We have an entire adapted process.

This interview is happening thanks to your visit to MB Therapeutics to meet other developers. What are your ambitions regarding their technology?

Sébastien GALLICE – For me, it is a first, there is a great curiosity emerging around new concepts. Today, as we said earlier, we work manually, so will tomorrow's technology be of service to us? What can we expect from the 3D printing of medicines? So, we are here to discuss and see what is proposed, what would be useful to us, and why not consider progressing together.

Do you have examples of potential advantages that 3D printing of medicines could offer?

Sébastien GALLICE – Let me take a very simple example: in our compounding labs, we are limited in the type of formulations we can make. And here, the MB Therapeutics team offered me dispersible pediatric formulations. I find that wonderful. I think that in terms of production quality, there is nothing to complain about; we are on roughly the same standards. However, bringing an extra and very significant advantage for mothers, grandparents who have specific treatments for their children, I think is an extraordinary asset. That is the first point.

The second point, which also seems major to me, is that we must protect all of our employees, and we handle more and more very complex products, which we call hazardous, carcinogenic, mutagenic, reprotoxic. If this 3D printing allows us to shield ourselves from exposure to these dangerous raw materials, it is also a huge step forward for the safety of our compounding labs.

There are added values for both staff and patients.

Sébastien GALLICE – Both, and that is ultimately what we are looking for. It is not just a personal added value, it is really: what do I bring to patients? In addition to safety of the dosage, I will also perhaps have very adapted formulas.

And from a personal standpoint, how do you see the future of 3D printing of medicines in the context of the preparations you mentioned earlier?

Sébastien GALLICE – I think it is a very important new tool, as we said, with two things that seem major to me. Employee protection is undeniably a major plus. The creation of very specific formulations that we are currently unable to produce in our compounding labs, such as dispersible formulations. And then, the government has established its roadmap on managing drug shortages today. We must not forget that in 10 years, we have multiplied the number of shortages of brand-name products by 10; from 400 we have gone to more than 4,000, or even 5,000. Will this 3D printing not allow us to facilitate this public health bridge that compounding labs currently manage? For example, in the absence of amoxicillin, we produced 7 million capsules, more than 100,000 treatments per month at the peak. Could this 3D printing help us be even more efficient?

You believe in the future of this technology.

Sébastien GALLICE – I believe in it closely, and I think it will help us progress and go even further, and certainly open up even more therapeutic schemes and adjustment schemes. We will talk perhaps about tapering off anxiolytics, why not. I know that in that area, there are very significant needs, and if we can support clinicians in clinical trials and then establish dose de-escalation protocols, that could be very important.

Finally, you mention clinicians, other pharmacists. Do you have any advice for them?

Sébastien GALLICE – To stay curious and to make both machines and people move forward on these new opportunities.