The 'chemputer' that could print out any drug

In my eys Lee Cronin is a dream merchants. His dreams have the potential to self-confessed experts who will just leave you out of pocket.
Nevertheless, similar „machines“ exists at all, they produce so called „libraries of compounds“ of up to thousands of new compounds nearly simultaneously. For example 100 very promising starting materials react simultaneously with 100 very promising reactants and produce 10 000 new substances. These are screened in a second step in experimental screening, fluorescent dyes are used as marker molecules when searching through extensive libraries of compounds for potential active drug ingredients that possess a specific affinity to biologically relevant target proteins (e.g. enzymes or signal transmitters). You can find in literature, that this ways give poor results, but it may happen from time to time, that a really wonderful new substance will be found.
 
While a cool article, this guy is really presenting several ideas, not one, and none of it has the least bit to do with 3D printing in the context it's normally mentioned.

He mentions: surface catalysts, computer-controlled reaction conditions, and performing multiple reactions in a coordinated sequence.

These are all clever, but what's further presented is a devicification of said techniques: you try to turn them all into a programmable robot. But this isn't tinkering, it's anti-tinkering. It prevents, rather than facilitates, the creativity of the user. If I want to use an intermediate or a reaction that the machine doesn't do, I have to throw up my hands and start over. It's less efficient and less convenient than using simple devices that each accomplish a single task. Wiring a thermometer in a distillation column to a computer that controls a heater is clever. Trying to put it all in a box isn't clever, it's an extension of whatever ancient instinct causes humans to put things in boxes.
 
I'd settle for something that could give me reliable, high yield synthetic routes to novel compounds... if we haven't gotten that far we probably have a little ways to go on the drug factory in a suitcase
 
Yes, in the past people came up with ideas on how you could talk to someone from 100 miles away through a metal wire they called a telephone. Of course, there were 100s of people who came up with 100s of reasons to why that would never work, and yet, it now works.

I would avoid using the word never to describe a process as basic as molecular printing. Humans aspire to space exploration and such, but if you can't even print molecules, what can you do? Really? I haven't asked you to bloat out the sun with solar panels yet and transport it intergalactically as a giant fusion reactor so compared to that, how unfeasible is it? Saying it will never work sounds a little post-modern pessimistic.

Saying that you got no clue how that would work is ok. I don't either :) But from there to saying it will never work is a long way. I mean, who are you to decide?
 
Nice. I want a few of these printers...

I wish you could have a drug "scanner" where lets say I have five of my valium left for example... or x amount of a drug...

stick it in...

tada

copies are made... and you have more of the originally scanned drug flying out of the other end...

the clone wars... lol.


or a drug teleporter... so we don't have to make drug deals in public.. just "email" or "fax" that shit... then copy it and have infinite amounts of whatever drug you want....

fuck yeah.... imagine the possibilities... no more refills... no more withdrawal... no more issues... even if they were copies and not real drugs... rip other people off with fake cloned diazepam... or whatever drug...

i just want my diazepam... and friday dammit I get it...

thats why I chose valium as my example drug. lol.
 
XThexXTank said:
I dont get it. How can a printer print drugs?
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it cannot. he's obviously (at least to anyone with an education in chemistry as far as i can tell) talking shit - most likely to get funding and/or media attention. that's not too unusual in acedemic circles.
i know a professor who sells legitimate research in cell death in microorganisms as "in the future we will stay young forever" to the media.
another one regularly "revolutionizes" our way of life by putting a chip into a random object (a pencil or a doormat or pretty much anything), which then proceeds to vibrate, blink or whatever when something special happens (most notable example: your true love, who miraculously happens to also have the chipped pencil, with her hobbies stored on this chip, walks by). as a friend of mine happend to work at that department, i know that none of these things actually worked and were given up at an early stage. but that's how you can get media attention and funding, so why not start the next nonsensical project?

i'm not saying that a "chemputer" is impossible far into the future, but it will certainly have nothing to do with the bullshit fram this article. why is this even on the frontpage?
 
What is the final verdict of people with a background in chemistry/physics? Is this possible? If so, could you estimate how much time until we see something like this in use?
 
slimvictor said:
Oh. My.

(Drops head in prayer)
Please God, let me have one of these machines before I die.
Give me at least a few years of health to play around, making and testing new psychedelics like Shulgin.
A decade or two is better.
Pretty please with cherries on top?

(Back to regular life)
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ditto
 
ok consider this one: a device designed to do one thing: a reagent-free redcution of pseudoephedrine or ephedrine. Is such a device is possible today?

I haven't studied how 3D printers work, so maybe somebody can explain how they'd manipulate matter at the molecular level.
 
By definition a chemical reaction uses reagents, so no, a reagent-free reduction of ephedrine is impossible. Closest to that at least requires hydrogen and a metal catalyst as reagents.
 
This "chemputer" idea is still probably 10 years away, 3d printers are good at extruding polymers/metals but not so good at manipulating chemical bonds.

At best, today, you could use your 3d printer to make reaction vessels, or makeshift lab glassware, or whatever. But "printing drugs" is still quite infeasible.
 
^

I'd say it's more then 10 years away. As I was saying earlier in the thread, electrons and atomic nuclei do not behave like baseballs or even like tiny drops of ink. The difference between classical and quantum mechanics make the concept of "printing" molecules by spraying around atoms in a manner analogous to droplets of ink seem meaningless imo.
 
Rorthron said:
Recipe for fame

1. conceive an outrageous idea. If feasible, choose an almost impossible one
2. promote it in academic circles and geek media tirelessly and very enthusiastically
3. dismiss every hint of a "back to reality" type of thing
4. Profit!

[this method works also for religion making]
Click to expand...

I need to do this...

I'd print out drugs that would make me smarter, like Algernon.
 
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