A new technique accelerates the development of vaccines and other pharmaceutical products in exceptionally low duration while minimizing costs.
In the quest for pharmaceutical agents such as vaccines, the pharmaceutical industry is poised to routinely examine thousands of related candidate molecules. A new technique allows this to scan on the nano scale, and thus minimize use of materials and energy.
The work is published in the journal Nature Chemistry.
Importantly, the nano scale technology allows more than 40,000 molecules to be synthesized and studied within a very small area of the size of a pinhead.
The method devised with a research effort of interdisciplinary experts promises to reduce the amount of material, energy, and economic cost for pharmaceutical companies drastically.
The functioning of the work involves using soap-like bubbles as nano-containers. Using DNA nanotechnology, multiple ingredients within the containers can be mixed.
The volume of nano-container is so small that the use of material can be compared to using one liter of water and one kilogram of material instead of entire volumes of water in all oceans to scan material corresponding to the entire mass of Mount Everest.
This amounts to unprecedented saving of material, manpower, and energy, stated head of the team.
The infinite saving on time, energy, and manpower would be fundamentally significant for the synthesis and evaluation of any pharmaceuticals, stated the lead author of the article.
The nano scale technology called single particle combinatorial lipdic nanocontainer fusion based on DNA mediated fusion (SPARCLD).
The tool involves integration of elements from normally quite distant fields: Synthetic biochemistry, combinational chemistry, DNA synthesis, and even Machine Learning.
Whilst any single element in the solution is not completely new, but they have never been combined seamlessly.