I noticed this the other day! Surely it can’t be real or is it someone patent busting? It’s all about printing your own compounds with a 3D printer. “In drug discovery, de novo compounds are usually difficult to synthesise  purify and suffer low yields. Thus, DrugPrinter, a novel protocol for ‘printing’ any compound instantly instead of using a time-consuming, low yield synthesis and without requiring purification and separation of byproduct, is proposed”.

It goes on “Thus, if DrugPrinter can one day become a reality it will be a huge step forward in drug discovery. The operator needs only to sit down in front of a computer and draw the structure of compound which is then inputted into the computer, and the system will automatically search cloud computing for suitable reaction conditions between bond and bond“.

The reactor is based on a traditional Chinese egg-cake oven! It will use optical tweezers on a robotic arm to grab atoms: here is the first clue optical!! I thought the wavelength of light was to long to resolve individual atoms?

Anyway I’ll leave you all to judge for yourselves, the paper is open access, by the way, something strange for Science Direct. Is this the Chinese equivalent of an April Fools joke?

Edit: I noticed that Chemjobber also spotted this paper, given to him by a colleague.

Edit: this link should provide access to the manuscript:

Please everyone read this by SepSpain who has taken the time and effort to do a few calculations. Thanks very much.    drugprinter

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