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.

Comments

Uhm... No?

[Cyberax]

There's not going to be a generic 3D "molecular printer" for a long, long time. For one thing, lots of interesting reactions require special conditions that won't sit well with generic "3D printing" stuff: heat, catalysts, pressure, nasty precursors.

Re:Uhm... No?

[vtcodger]

Especially if the pharma lobby has its way. They will not be too thrilled bout having this tech in hospitals either.

Safe bet. This stuff will be patented, will require years of testing, FDA approval, a maintenance contract, an internet connection, and will cost a fortune -- in the US anyway. It'll be sold by big pharma, not fought by big pharma.

If it does turn out to be cheap, easy and effective, you'll probably have to smuggle your equipment into the US from China, Cuba ... or Botswana or buy it from some dude who hangs out at a decrepit bowling alley in bad part of town..

Re:Uhm... No?

[Rei]

It's not as interesting as what I though it was going to be about. I'd like to see a series of a dozen or two small, high-temperature-capable reaction vessels (some glass, some platinum-coated steel), each with its own temperature and pressure regulation hardware, and self-reconfiguring plumbing fixtures attached to it (gas/liquid multiplexers). Some vessels would come with common catalyst packs in them (platinum, vanadium oxide, iron, etc), some capable of maintaining a temperature gradient for distillation, some for gas-liquid exchange, some with stirring hardware or an auger to remove precipitates, one with electrodes for electrolysis, etc. A couple heat exchangers also would be nice (potentially the same hardware as the MUXes), as well as a the obligate pump(s) and compressor(s). And of course you need hoppers for solid feedstocks, feed lines for liquids and gases, etc. A nice touch would be if one or more XYZ-axis arms could move between different feedstocks and/or containers for finished products.

Something like that, where the vessels remain constant but the lines between them reconfigure based on software inputs, would be amazing. Doesn't need to be large - even a desk-sized unit would be very useful. And such a thing would be invaluable for space applications, too; it's one thing to set up offworld production of certain largescale feedstocks, but a whole different thing to try to set up production of every chemical we use as a society, and in particular those needed to keep your industrial processes going. Small-scale batch synthesis is an option, but that requires human labour, and humans leave a massive trail of required consumables in their wake. Automated lab synthesis, however...

But as for this? I don't see the point of the 3d printer. They're just printing a bunch of simply interconnected vessels and then manually doing a series of reactions in them.

Re:Uhm... No?

[EndlessNameless]

Maybe you should just stay positive instead.

There is a difference between positivity and the foolish optimism born from ignorance. OP was right in saying that general-purpose "molecular printing" is very, very far from being available.

This isn't even a prototype of such a device---it was a one-off proof of concept with a specific target. If you can't even criticize the reasons for his claim, then maybe you should keep your mouth shut about his opinion.

If they come to fruition, the first generation of molecular printers will likely have a limited use case, much like 3D printers. The headline is misleading at best, and that's not even accounting for the patent and regulatory issues related to drug production.

Even without 3D printers

[Anonymous Coward]

You can actually manufacture drugs yourself right now.

Pharma Lobby

[DrYak]

They will not be too thrilled bout having this tech in hospitals either.

Hospitals (specially those with a university nearby) (and in theory even pharmacy stores too - though in my limited US experience these seem to have been replaced by some type of supermarket that happen to sell a bit of medications too) already have small labs that can produce a limited amount of medication.

Such "lab-in-a-kit" approach could only be expanding a bit the kind of stuff they can produce locally.
(Or in the case of hospital-with-a-university-lab-within-reach, reducing the time to bring the medication for the simpler molecule that are within reach of the "lab-in-a-kit" and don't require the full university lab).

In these contexts, it's not much a big change, and probably won't register on the pharma's radar.

but I don't think we're going to see such devices in homes in our lifetime, if ever.

Especially if the pharma lobby has its way.

You think, so? Nope. On the contrary.
Home drugs is a giant market, and this is definitely a way to secure a foot in it.
They'll patent it, run through certification projects (rising costs) and sell it, for a premium.
THEN SELL THE EXCLUSIVE CONTRACTS to provide the necessary consumable for your home drug synthesizer.

You though inkjet cartridges were as expensive as if they were filled with unicorn blood ?
Just wait to see the price the pharma companies are going to charge you for their "Drug-o-tron 3000" cartridge replacements. And as these are used for drugs manufacture, you bet there are doing to be heavy regulations by the FDA preventing you to refill the cartridges yourself. (Much better regulated than the current meager attempts to invoke DMCA regarding small counting chips emebed in inkjet cartridges).

This partially cures the pharma industries worst nightmare :
The worst nightmare is not to have any new molecule to sell once your older patents run out, while your competitor manage to put something on the market.
Suddenly you're the guy left out, not having anything lucrative to sell, and having missed the market the other managed to enter.

With this kind of "at-home-lab-kits", suddenly it doesn't matter as much. Even if your competitor is the one who lands the patent to sell a new drug, you can still make a chunk of money by selling the exclusive cartridges to the patient so they can fab-at-home it.

And unlike inkjet cartridges (which have basically used the same type of unicorn blood inside for the past decade), the "fab-a-drug-at-home" technology is bound to evolve over the next decades. Meaning new, freshly patented system requiring new cartridge contract everyfew year (think rebuying your smartphone every 2-3 years, except wich actual physico-chemical justification for newer synth tech).

Throw in remote data collection, and the insurance companies will happily jump together into the bandwagon.