Slashdot Mirror
You Could Soon Be Manufacturing Your Own Drugs -- Thanks To 3D Printing (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: Forget those long lines at the pharmacy: Someday soon, you might be making your own medicines at home. That's because researchers have tailored a 3D printer to synthesize pharmaceuticals and other chemicals from simple, widely available starting compounds fed into a series of water bottle -- size reactors. The work, they say, could digitize chemistry, allowing users to synthesize almost any compound anywhere in the world.
In today's issue of Science, Leroy Cronin, a chemist at the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom, and his colleagues report printing a series of interconnected reaction vessels that carry out four different chemical reactions involving 12 separate steps, from filtering to evaporating different solutions. By adding different reagents and solvents at the right times and in a precise order, they were able to convert simple, widely available starting compounds into a muscle relaxant called baclofen. And by designing reactionware to carry out different chemical reactions with different reagents, they produced other medicines, including an anticonvulsant and a drug to fight ulcers and acid reflux. So why not just buy a reactionware kit and scrap the printing? "This approach will allow the on-demand production of chemicals and drugs that are in short supply, hard to make at big facilities, and allow customization to tailor them to the application," Cronin says.
In today's issue of Science, Leroy Cronin, a chemist at the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom, and his colleagues report printing a series of interconnected reaction vessels that carry out four different chemical reactions involving 12 separate steps, from filtering to evaporating different solutions. By adding different reagents and solvents at the right times and in a precise order, they were able to convert simple, widely available starting compounds into a muscle relaxant called baclofen. And by designing reactionware to carry out different chemical reactions with different reagents, they produced other medicines, including an anticonvulsant and a drug to fight ulcers and acid reflux. So why not just buy a reactionware kit and scrap the printing? "This approach will allow the on-demand production of chemicals and drugs that are in short supply, hard to make at big facilities, and allow customization to tailor them to the application," Cronin says.
People already manufacture their own drugs at home, these homes are generally referred to as "meth labs"...
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
It is not fucking 3-D printing buzzword bullshit. And it is not new. And there are plenty of manufacturers of purpose built equipment for this sort of thing tha make much more sense than adapting a garage toy.
http://www.gilson.com/en/GilsonProducts/AutomatedSystems.aspx
https://www.agilent.com/en-us/products/automation-solutions
But you're still going to need purification, assay and QA. (You'll need high pressure liquid chromatographs, gas chromatographs, mass spectrometers...)
No, you can't make drugs at home without a proper lab.
Did you even read the summary? It's about printing purposed designed equipment to carry out specific reactions in an easy/efficient manner.
Getting the stock for many drugs is easy, carrying out the reaction is hard. This alleviates the difficulty and can perhaps be done where the drugs are needed most or at a local level so organisations don't need to keep huge stockpiles of un-expired drugs in case of emergency.
The main difference between medicine and poison is dosage. My blood thinner is actually a low-dose rat poison. Have some software or hardware malfunction and screw up the dosage, and things could get really serious. Sooo... no thanks...
Quite possibly true, but this looks to be 3D-print your own meth LAB, not 3D-print your own methamphetamine.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey