Counterfeiting of pharmaceuticals is a growing and extremely concerning problem as supported by the increased prevalence, revenues (in the tens of billions), and sophistication of counterfeit medications. Current anti-counterfeit technologies for pharmaceuticals are generally easy for counterfeiters to imitate and typically rely on printing on packages, engraving or standard printing on pills, and pedigrees (only adopted by a few governmental organizations). Considering the dire impacts of counterfeit pharmaceuticals, including loss of life, an extra layer of difficult to replicate anti-counterfeit technology could alert medical personnel and consumers of potential counterfeit pharmaceuticals prior to consumption. In this contribution, two “non-toxic” fluorescent compounds (fluorescein and tryptophan) where formulated into inks for direct printing on medications. Fluorescein is a compound currently used in eye surgeries and tryptophan is a non-toxic amino acid. These inks were successfully printed on a number of medications and evaluated for authentication purposes. The success of these inks may ultimately lead to an easy way for medical personnel and consumers to identify counterfeit pharmaceuticals.
Brian A. Logue, Jamie Kern, Shelby Altena, Jacob Petersen, Sierra Rassmusan, Robert Oda, Jon J. Kellar, "Countering Counterfeiting of Drugs: Unique Fluorescent Inks for Direct Printing onto Pharmaceuticals" in Proc. IS&T Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies and Digital Fabrication (NIP31), 2015, pp 371 - 374, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2015.31.1.art00081_1