"Chemputer" may democratise pharmaceutical sector

The system, named by research leader Lee Cronin, Regius professor of chemistry at the University of Glasgow, uses downloadable blueprints to easily and reliably synthesise drug molecules. Described in Science, this represents "a key step in the digitisation of chemistry, and will allow the universal assembly of complex molecules on demand," Cronin claimed.

Cronin has been working on the chemputer concept and the software system which runs the chemical recipes and directs the synthesis process, known as a chempiler, for some years. The Science paper represents a major step in perfecting the idea, he said. A key part of the project was developing a new universal and interoperable standards for writing and sharing chemical recipes, which involved creating a general abstraction for chemistry.

This has proved difficult in the past because chemistry tends to operate like a language with irregular verbs and exceptions to rules.This is further complicated by a tendency for syntheses to be incompletely documented and, as they tend to be very manual processes when first developed, this means that complex chemicals are generally only available when the synthesis has been transformed into an industrial process and automated at relatively large-scale, which puts clinicians very much at the mercy of large pharmaceutical companies and complex  logistical chains for their medical supplies.