Breakthrough Molecular 3D Printer

[user9876]

An interesting new technology that can print molecules including the potential to help with drug development or manufacture

http://3dprint.com/50777/molecular-3d-printer/

The potential this new machine could have for new rapid drug discovery as well as new chemically spawned technologies could be staggering. Imagine a website like Thingiverse, where instead of open sourcing 3D design files for printing, you could open source medications and other chemicals. That’s where the future may be headed!

 

[5150]

I'm all for being positive about the future, but truthfully it's the present that's killing me.
Thanks for the info.

 

[*GG*]

I'm all for being positive about the future, but truthfully it's the present that's killing me.
Thanks for the info.

LOL, good one.

So how will the printer know how to make new compounds? Wouldn't it need to know some chemistry? Not to sound like a luddite, but could this lead to dangerous toxins being produced? Something that is not good for anything living?

GG

 

[WillowJ]

The machine is able to use a catch-and-release method to automate the process of connecting these building blocks together, one brick at a time, while releasing the byproducts of each chemical reaction. It was this technique of releasing the unwanted byproducts which made this breakthrough a reality.

Does that make it "cleaner" than other methods of manufacture? (less unwanted stuff in the compound?)

 

[adreno]

So how will the printer know how to make new compounds? Wouldn't it need to know some chemistry?

It's a printer. It doesn't know anything. You need to feed it a recipe.

 

[alex3619]

Fascinating.

 

[user9876]

3d printing is starting to prove useful at a design and prototyping stage in product development. So the first hope with a molecule printer would be that it could speed up drug research by making it easier to produce a particular compound to be tested and to do so in a relatively pure way. It doesn't help in thinking what should be produced but it might change the process a bit in widening the possibilities from compounds that can be easily produced in a lab.

A general longer term future for 3d printing is to move into manufacture. In general it has the ability to reshape parts of the manufacturing industry but that is probably a good few years away. In terms of medicine in the shorter term it could possibly change the cost structure which could help but given the patent system is tied to product and not manufacture method (which is what the old German system was based on) this may prove hard. Longer term it seems to add to the idea of personalised medicine - if we had a better understanding of genetics etc could we modify particular drugs to be suitable for a particular person. Or I have a vague memory of a project looking at (using quantum computing to) match markers on bacteria with a given compound that would bind to them. These ideas are of course many years away but I think it is interesting how pieces of technology can open up different paths.

 

[Bob]

I wondered about waste products as well, but they are only manufacturing organic molecules so perhaps all the waste products are common biodegradable compounds.

No specific details are given about how the actual process works.

They are investing in the next generation machine already.

It does give one indication of how it might be used in the short term:

"...the company already is working to improve upon an anti-fungal compound known as Amphotericin B, which is found in nature and used to treat patients with life-threatening fungal infections."