Frankfurt One tablet once a day in exactly the individually required dose – this is what every patient’s medication plan could look like one day, if the founders of the start-up Dihesys have their way. The company, founded in 2018, wants to improve drug therapy with digitally printed medicines. “Personalized tablets enable more targeted therapy with fewer side effects. Because they are tailored to the patient and the dose and composition of active ingredients can be changed at any time,” says Christian Franken, co-founder of Dihesys.
The 52-year-old knows the problems of today’s drug therapies. The qualified pharmacist worked as a hospital pharmacist and was chief pharmacist for the drug mail-order company Doc Morris for many years. He knows that industrially manufactured medicines work differently for everyone and that the available dose does not always meet the exact needs of the patient. “It is estimated that 60 percent of the drugs prescribed do not bring the desired medical benefit,” he says.
In addition, there is the problem of multi-medication: According to data from the “Arzneimittelkompass 2022” (Arzneimittelkompass 2022), around one in seven legally insured patients in Germany is affected by at least three chronic diseases and takes five or more medications on a long-term basis. This can lead to negative drug interactions.
In addition, many tablets are taken incorrectly or not at all. According to industry estimates, around 500,000 hospital admissions and around 50,000 deaths per year are attributed to inadequate drug therapy.
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Digitally printed personalized tablets aim to solve these problems. Dihesys can currently print 2D tablets. These are thin plates reminiscent of edible paper or small wafers. Depending on the dosage, up to four active ingredients can currently be applied to these.
For 3D tablets, the start-up relies on the so-called filament process, in which the active ingredients are incorporated into polymers. Dihesys intends to have developed the first pilot products in this segment in about a year.
Fast-acting antihypertensives, special dosages for children
Dihesys is the abbreviation for Digital Health System. All three founders have many years of professional experience in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry. Gerald Huber, 56, has a doctorate in pharmaceutical technology and worked for companies such as Roche and Boehringer before he was managing director of Ratiopharm (later Teva) for many years. He co-founded various digital health start-ups and is now the largest shareholder in Dihesys.
Chemist and business economist Markus Dachtler, 50, has worked for the Nestlé Group and Ratiopharm, among others. In 2015 he bought from Ratiopharm Genplus, a company that provides research and development services to pharmaceutical companies. Munich-based Genplus now supplies the active ingredient inks for Dihesys. Dachtler is Co-CEO of Dihesys alongside Franken.
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The Dihesys printer was developed at the company’s site in Schwäbisch Gmünd. The packaging machine manufacturer Harro Höflinger, who also has a stake in Dihesys, supports the design.
It is important to the founders not to be perceived as a printer supplier. “We deliver a system consisting of hardware, software and an active ingredient. A system for personalized therapies,” emphasizes Franken.
All three Dihesys founders have many years of professional experience in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry.
(Photo: Dihesys)
A total of 27 active ingredients are currently in formulation development to make them printable. “We take action when doctors approach us because they need a specific drug,” says Huber.
Interest comes from many areas: from cardiologists who are looking for fast-acting antihypertensive drugs, from paediatricians who need low-dose pills for the little patients, but also from neurologists, transplant doctors and oncologists.
Incorrect medication jeopardizes many therapies
In the USA, Dihesys supplies a large healthcare provider and also cooperates with the development departments of large and small pharmaceutical companies. Names cannot be given due to non-disclosure agreements. A number of projects are also underway at university hospitals: in Heidelberg, for example, the use of printed tablets in children is being investigated.
The device can print tablets in both 2D and 3D processes.
(Photo: Dihesys)
Cardiologist Ralf Westenfeld wants to use the Dihesys system at the Düsseldorf University Hospital in order to better adjust people with a transplanted heart when administering medication. “Transplant patients have to take a combination of drugs. It is very important that everyone gets the right dose,” says the doctor. Studies show that up to 20 percent of transplanted organs are lost because patients forget to take the pills or take them incorrectly. “It’s much easier for them if you have everything in one strip or one capsule,” says Westenfeld.
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Dihesys has already won numerous start-up prizes and awards for its business idea. The idea of printing tablets is not new. But the implementation is demanding. In 2015, a powder-printed tablet was approved in the USA for the first time, but no other since then. In Germany, the pharmaceutical group Merck is working in its Life Science division, among other things, on further developing polymers for 3D printing processes, which it wants to make available to its pharmaceutical customers.
“Many institutes and companies are working on printing processes for medicines,” says Huber. Dihesys sees itself ahead of the competition in Germany because it offers parallel 2D and 3D printing in the same printer. The legal framework has also been clarified: the company’s activities are covered by the status of the prescription drug. This states that pharmacists are allowed to produce a certain amount of medicine themselves without requiring a manufacturing license or drug approval.
Costs of several euros per tablet
Depending on the formulation, a tablet printed using the 2D process by Dihesys currently costs between less than one euro and several euros each. That is a multiple compared to industrially manufactured pills, which can be had for a few cents each. Apotheker Franken does not find this direct comparison fair. “If you included the improvement in therapy and quality of life for patients, greater adherence to therapy and, last but not least, the avoidance of pharmaceutical waste, the calculation would look very different,” he says.
So far, Dihesys has raised a little more than ten million euros in capital. According to Huber, the company, which currently has 27 employees, intends to break even by mid to late 2025. The company will likely need another round of funding before then. “We would also be open to new investors, especially if there were a strategic investor who finds the topic of digitization particularly attractive,” says Huber.
Because in the future, Dihesys wants to be part of a digitally networked ecosystem around the patient, in which the printer in the pharmacy is fed with the data of the doctor’s digital prescription. And who monitors the effect of the printed individualized medicine on patients with sensors and portable digital helpers.
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