The future: Making Medicines in your kitchen?

Source: New York Times

Synthesizing drugs in a cooking kitchen is usually reserved for dangerous drug dealers or characters in the popular crime/drama show 'Breaking Bad.'  Although, in China, last November, the New York Times reported on the shortage of drugs which has driven those desperate for medications to resort to drug synthesis in kitchen's (as shown above) and described below:

Zhang Zhejun used a fat plastic straw to gently tap the pale yellow pharmaceutical powder onto a piece of silver foil that lay on an electronic scale. He made sure the amount was just right before he poured it into a clear capsule.

When you’re making cancer drugs at home, the measurements must be precise.

Mr. Zhang has no medical experience and no background in making drugs professionally. He did this out of desperation. His mother suffered from lung cancer and required expensive drugs that China’s ambitious but troubled health care system couldn’t provide.

He was aware of the risks. The drug he was making hadn’t been approved by regulators in China or the United States. Mr. Zhang had bought the raw ingredients online, but he wasn’t sure from whom, or whether they were even real.

As described in the article cited above, the prices of medications are driven by a crisis in health insurance coverage in China.  Since drugs have been synthesized in the kitchen by many around the world over decades (illegally I might add), one is left to wonder with the advances in technology, how far off are we from synthesizing drugs in a kitchen?  Why would I ask such a question?



As technology increases in the pharmaceutical sector along with advancing nanotechnology, the prospect of making pharmaceutical (drugs) might soon be possible from within your kitchen. What?  Yes, you heard me correctly.  Until a few days ago, I was unaware of the fact of the possibility also.  I was catching up on old blog posts on the National Institutes of Health website.  Specifically, the Director of the National Institutes of Health personal blog site -- which is awesome I might add.



After reading the blog post discussed below, I remembered the article cited above from the New York Times.  I just had to connect the two for a blog post.  And here we are.  According to the Director's blog page for the National Institutes of Health, new research and emerging technology called Integrated Scalable Cyto-Technology (InSCyT) as described below:

Today, vaccines and other protein-based biologic drugs are typically made in large, dedicated manufacturing facilities. But that doesn’t always fit the need, and it could one day change. A team of researchers has engineered a miniaturized biopharmaceutical “factory” that could fit on a dining room table and produce hundreds to thousands of doses of a needed treatment in about three days.

As published recently in the journal Nature Biotechnology, this on-demand manufacturing system is called Integrated Scalable Cyto-Technology (InSCyT). It is fully automated and can be readily reconfigured to produce virtually any approved or experimental vaccine, hormone, replacement enzyme, antibody, or other biopharmaceutical. With further improvements and testing, InSCyT promises to give researchers and health care providers easy access to specialty biologics needed to treat rare diseases, as well as treatments for combating infectious disease outbreaks in remote towns or villages around the globe.

In today’s commercial manufacturing facilities, biologic therapies used to treat cancer, cardiovascular disease, and many other disorders are made in huge vats, in which harmless bacteria, yeast, or mammalian cells churn out large quantities of a single product. But researchers, led by NIH grantee J. Christopher Love, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, have recognized a growing need to design a new kind of manufacturing system, capable of producing a wide variety of clinical-grade products on an as-needed basis.

Dr. Collins continues on in the blog post to describe the simple 3-step modular process: Production, Purification, and Formulation.  The three module system is interconnected and as described in the introduction could potentially fit onto a kitchen or dining room table.  Currently, the researchers were able to produce (synthesize) Human Growth Hormone (HGH).  Of course, this was due to the extensive knowledge surrounding HGH by the scientific community.



Other synthetic compounds were listed.  Typical process development times are at around 12 weeks to fully develop a process for medication.  The amount of doses possible to synthesize in a given week are an astounding 100.  Yes, with this modular set up, the prospect of synthesizing 100 doses in a single week is supposedly being reported.



Currently, the process is composed of plastic bottles, vials, and instruments linked with plastic tubing.  In the future, researchers hope to make the system more user-friendly for the non-chemist in the house.  Does this research line up with where we are as a society?



Shows like 'Breaking Bad' tells us that synthesis is dangerous but a potentially profitable business if you are willing to take the risk.  On the flip side, if the residents in the United States were confronting the crisis in resourcing their medications like those in China are, where are we left to be?  Add to that, the changing academic landscape which is moving more courses from a traditional lecture based room to an online platform - such as "MOOC" - Massive Open Online Courses.



A cursory search for home ready lab class kits reveal a couple of contenders.  First up is a company called "Hands On Labs."  Shown below is an overview video of the product/platform:

The company has been successfully providing lab experiments to universities and people from 1994.  Of course, that is not to say that 'Hands On Labs" has been shipping chemistry labs to individual houses for instruction since 1994.  Individual shipping has kept pace with the development of the 'Massive Open Online Course' platform.  More and more universities are leaning or being nudged to adopt a version of this curricula as technology improves and education changes.  Visit 'Hands On Labs' website for greater detail.



Next up is a competitor company is 'Carolina Biological Supply Company' with a website filled with kits ready for purchase and soon to be shipped immediately after.  Here is an introductory video shown below:

The company was founded by professors as indicated on their 'Wikipedia' page.  For those interested in looking into greater detail into Carolina Biological Supply Company, access their website by clicking here or their YouTube Channel by clicking here.  The range of experiments and samples offered by these companies really gives a person a sense that the university is rapidly disappearing. Not so...at least for the moment.



There still exists a large array of common experiments which cannot be 'outsourced' to an individual's home for self application.  Hazardous chemicals which work extremely well in certain synthetic routes still need to be professionally handled by trained staff members at the university.  Although, one could argue that the production of such kits is great for one reason alone.  Production of laboratory kits with experiments which illustrate principles taught in first and second year chemistry course will improve science overall.  What do I mean by this?



As the world changes toward more sustainable living conditions, corporations will eventually have to find 'greener' substitutes for harsher (corrosive) chemicals.  Products from companies listed above give us hope that the transition is already being considered.  Any shipped chemistry experiment has the potential to turn a kitchen or workspace inside a house into a disaster zone if improperly handled.  Therefore, the researchers/producers of such kits need to consider every possible misuse of their products by the average user.



In turn, this discovery/consideration forms the impetus for a transition inside of corporations to change toward more environmentally friendly chemicals in their commercial synthesis.  Lab kits like those above are exciting and show the range of possibilities when good scientists put their thinking caps on and think critically toward alternatives which are safe for the consumer and safe for the environment.  Hopefully, no American resident finds himself/herself in a position as described in the New York Times article above -- synthesizing medication in their kitchen out of necessity.  Although, if they do, at least commercial products which have been introduced above will provide a platform for success.



Related Blog Posts:



Scientific Evidence Points To Dangerous Chemicals Associated With Vaping


 How much nicotine is in a bottle of e-liquid? Is the level toxic?


EPA Administrator Nominee Andrew Wheeler's Opening Statement - Confirmation Hearing!


NIDA Director Nora Volkow: How Health Communicators and Journalists Can Help Replace Stigma with Science


What is the next big step in Mental Health Research?