ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Lee Cronin - Chemist
A professor of chemistry, nanoscience and chemical complexity, Lee Cronin and his research group investigate how chemistry can revolutionize modern technology and even create life.

Why you should listen

Lee Cronin's lab at the University of Glasgow does cutting-edge research into how complex chemical systems, created from non-biological building blocks, can have real-world applications with wide impact. At TEDGlobal 2012, Cronin shared some of the lab's latest work: creating a 3D printer for molecules. This device -- which has been prototyped -- can download plans for molecules and print them, in the same way that a 3D printer creates objects. In the future, Cronin says this technology could potentially be used to print medicine -- cheaply and wherever it is needed. As Cronin says: "What Apple did for music, I'd like to do for the discovery and distribution of prescription drugs."

At TEDGlobal 2011, Cronin shared his lab's bold plan to create life. At the moment, bacteria is the minimum unit of life -- the smallest chemical unit that can undergo evolution. But in Cronin's emerging field, he's thinking about forms of life that won't be biological. To explore this, and to try to understand how life itself originated from chemicals, Cronin and others are attempting to create truly artificial life from completely non-biological chemistries that mimic the behavior of natural cells. They call these chemical cells, or Chells. 

Cronin's research interests also encompass self-assembly and self-growing structures -- the better to assemble life at nanoscale. At the University of Glasgow, this work on crystal structures is producing a raft of papers from his research group. He says: "Basically one of my longstanding research goals is to understand how life emerged on planet Earth and re-create the process."

Read the papers referenced in his TEDGlobal 2102 talk:

Integrated 3D-printed reactionware for chemical synthesis and analysis, Nature Chemistry

Configurable 3D-Printed millifluidic and microfluidic ‘lab on a chip’ reactionware devices, Lab on a Chip

More profile about the speaker
Lee Cronin | Speaker | TED.com
TEDGlobal 2012

Lee Cronin: Print your own medicine

Filmed:
1,045,687 views

Chemist Lee Cronin is working on a 3D printer that, instead of objects, is able to print molecules. An exciting potential long-term application: printing your own medicine using chemical inks.
- Chemist
A professor of chemistry, nanoscience and chemical complexity, Lee Cronin and his research group investigate how chemistry can revolutionize modern technology and even create life. Full bio

Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.

00:16
Organic chemists make molecules,
0
763
2615
00:19
very complicated molecules,
1
3378
1816
00:21
by chopping up a big molecule into small molecules
2
5194
3684
00:24
and reverse engineering.
3
8878
1861
00:26
And as a chemist,
4
10739
1039
00:27
one of the things I wanted to ask my research group a couple of years ago is,
5
11778
3467
00:31
could we make a really cool universal chemistry set?
6
15245
4151
00:35
In essence, could we "app" chemistry?
7
19396
5033
00:40
Now what would this mean, and how would we do it?
8
24429
3183
00:43
Well to start to do this,
9
27612
1971
00:45
we took a 3D printer
10
29583
1732
00:47
and we started to print our beakers and our test tubes on one side
11
31315
4302
00:51
and then print the molecule at the same time on the other side
12
35617
4065
00:55
and combine them together in what we call reactionware.
13
39682
3154
00:58
And so by printing the vessel and doing the chemistry at the same time,
14
42836
4434
01:03
we may start to access this universal toolkit of chemistry.
15
47270
5167
01:08
Now what could this mean?
16
52437
1548
01:09
Well if we can embed biological and chemical networks like a search engine,
17
53985
5268
01:15
so if you have a cell that's ill that you need to cure
18
59253
3149
01:18
or bacteria that you want to kill,
19
62402
1719
01:20
if you have this embedded in your device
20
64121
2331
01:22
at the same time, and you do the chemistry,
21
66452
2449
01:24
you may be able to make drugs in a new way.
22
68901
3601
01:28
So how are we doing this in the lab?
23
72502
2400
01:30
Well it requires software, it requires hardware
24
74902
3099
01:33
and it requires chemical inks.
25
78001
2366
01:36
And so the really cool bit is,
26
80367
1453
01:37
the idea is that we want to have a universal set of inks
27
81820
3047
01:40
that we put out with the printer,
28
84867
2269
01:43
and you download the blueprint, the organic chemistry for that molecule
29
87136
4282
01:47
and you make it in the device.
30
91418
3000
01:50
And so you can make your molecule in the printer using this software.
31
94418
5567
01:55
So what could this mean?
32
99985
2199
01:58
Well, ultimately, it could mean that you could print your own medicine.
33
102184
4947
02:03
And this is what we're doing in the lab at the moment.
34
107131
1969
02:05
But to take baby steps to get there,
35
109100
1902
02:06
first of all we want to look at drug design and production,
36
111002
2833
02:09
or drug discovery and manufacturing.
37
113835
2650
02:12
Because if we can manufacture it after we've discovered it,
38
116485
2999
02:15
we could deploy it anywhere.
39
119484
2134
02:17
You don't need to go to the chemist anymore.
40
121618
2116
02:19
We can print drugs at point of need.
41
123734
2368
02:22
We can download new diagnostics.
42
126102
2655
02:24
Say a new super bug has emerged.
43
128757
2011
02:26
You put it in your search engine,
44
130768
1617
02:28
and you create the drug to treat the threat.
45
132385
3133
02:31
So this allows you on-the-fly molecular assembly.
46
135518
3688
02:35
But perhaps for me the core bit going into the future
47
139206
2995
02:38
is this idea of taking your own stem cells,
48
142201
3350
02:41
with your genes and your environment,
49
145551
1767
02:43
and you print your own personal medicine.
50
147318
3449
02:46
And if that doesn't seem fanciful enough,
51
150767
2252
02:48
where do you think we're going to go?
52
153019
2048
02:50
Well, you're going to have your own personal matter fabricator.
53
155067
4584
02:55
Beam me up, Scotty.
54
159651
1900
02:57
(Applause)
55
161551
3349
Translated by Timothy Covell
Reviewed by Morton Bast

▲Back to top

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Lee Cronin - Chemist
A professor of chemistry, nanoscience and chemical complexity, Lee Cronin and his research group investigate how chemistry can revolutionize modern technology and even create life.

Why you should listen

Lee Cronin's lab at the University of Glasgow does cutting-edge research into how complex chemical systems, created from non-biological building blocks, can have real-world applications with wide impact. At TEDGlobal 2012, Cronin shared some of the lab's latest work: creating a 3D printer for molecules. This device -- which has been prototyped -- can download plans for molecules and print them, in the same way that a 3D printer creates objects. In the future, Cronin says this technology could potentially be used to print medicine -- cheaply and wherever it is needed. As Cronin says: "What Apple did for music, I'd like to do for the discovery and distribution of prescription drugs."

At TEDGlobal 2011, Cronin shared his lab's bold plan to create life. At the moment, bacteria is the minimum unit of life -- the smallest chemical unit that can undergo evolution. But in Cronin's emerging field, he's thinking about forms of life that won't be biological. To explore this, and to try to understand how life itself originated from chemicals, Cronin and others are attempting to create truly artificial life from completely non-biological chemistries that mimic the behavior of natural cells. They call these chemical cells, or Chells. 

Cronin's research interests also encompass self-assembly and self-growing structures -- the better to assemble life at nanoscale. At the University of Glasgow, this work on crystal structures is producing a raft of papers from his research group. He says: "Basically one of my longstanding research goals is to understand how life emerged on planet Earth and re-create the process."

Read the papers referenced in his TEDGlobal 2102 talk:

Integrated 3D-printed reactionware for chemical synthesis and analysis, Nature Chemistry

Configurable 3D-Printed millifluidic and microfluidic ‘lab on a chip’ reactionware devices, Lab on a Chip

More profile about the speaker
Lee Cronin | Speaker | TED.com