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takyon writes:

'Chemputer' promises app-controlled revolution for drug production

In a new paper published online in the journal Science today (November 29), researchers from the University of Glasgow present for the first time how synthesis of important drug molecules can be achieved in an affordable and modular chemical-robot system they call a chemputer.

While recent advances in chemical production have allowed some chemical compounds to be produced at laboratory scale via automated systems, the chemputer is underpinned by a new universal and interoperable standard for writing and sharing chemical recipes, developed by the University of Glasgow team. The key was to develop a general abstraction for chemistry that can be made universal, practical, and driven by a computer program.

Those chemical recipes, run on a computer program the team calls the 'chempiler', instruct the chemputer how to produce molecules on-demand, more affordably and safely than ever possible before The researchers claim the ability to use a universal code will allow chemists all round the world to convert their recipe into digital code, allowing others to share and download recipes similar in a similar way[sic] to music is today on iTunes or Spotify.

[...] In the paper, the team of researchers from the University's School of Chemistry demonstrate the potential of the system by producing three different pharmaceuticals in one robot system, simply by changing the software and input chemicals. They created the sleeping drug Nytol, seizure medication Rufinamide, and erectile dysfunction treatment Viagra in yields comparable to those achieved in traditional human-controlled synthesis.

Organic synthesis in a modular robotic system driven by a chemical programming language (DOI: 10.1126/science.aav2211) (DX)

Original Submission