A small pharmaceutical factory

A refrigerator-sized machine is capable of printing medicines on request

Vyacheslav Golovanov, GeekTimes, based on the materials of the Daily Mail: Print your pills at home: Researchers reveal a refrigerator-sized machine that can make prescription drugs on demand

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created a prototype of a portable tablet factory. The refrigerator-sized device is capable of producing medicines from prepared solutions or suspensions.

The modern pharmaceutical industry consists of factories producing drugs on a large scale, while individual parts of production can be very geographically dispersed. The disadvantage of this approach is the large time spent on production, as well as the emerging risks of interrupting the distribution process. In addition, it is extremely unprofitable to produce rare medicines in this way, which are required by a relatively small number of people.

So far, the test unit is capable of delivering 1,000 doses per day of any of the four drugs (diphenhydramine, lidocaine, diazepam, fluoxetine). Instead of massive vats, the device uses small tubes and the principle of continuous in-line synthesis. This system saves engineers from having to invent complex cooling systems. Reactions take place at temperatures up to 250 degrees Celsius and pressures up to 17 atmospheres. The modular structure of the device allows you to quickly replace its individual parts to produce different medications.

The device is not intended to replace the usual pharmaceutical industry. It can be useful for the manufacture of rare medicines, drugs for clinical trials, to quickly issue an increased amount of certain drugs in case of sudden epidemics or to insure the classical production of medicines in the event of a factory shutdown for any reason.

It can also be used in those regions where it is unprofitable or difficult to create drug storage facilities. And the drugs produced by him may not require the properties necessary for long–term storage - after all, they can still be created on request.

Among the goals of the developers of the device is to further reduce the size and complexity of the drugs that it can produce.

Portal "Eternal Youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  05.04.2016