Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you didn't touch with technology? With tech
Speaker 1: Stuff from how stuff flix dot com. Hello everyone, and
Speaker 1: welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette, and
Speaker 1: I am an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me as always, his senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: Hey there, he's playing with a rubber dinosaur, one of
Speaker 1: our one of the many accouterments that has given to
Speaker 1: us as one of the benefits of being in how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com podcaster. We've got a glass bowl
Speaker 1: full of rubber dinosaurs. It's kind of hard not to
Speaker 1: play with it. It really is so sudden but inevitable portrayal.
Speaker 1: Nice kids, that's a Firefly reference. Um, technically, uh, Firefly
Speaker 1: episode one reference. Let's talk a bit about what we're
Speaker 1: actually going to discuss today though, Yes, so today we
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about inkjet printers, some other kinds of printers,
Speaker 1: but not printers in the way that you would traditionally
Speaker 1: use a printer, you know, I think about you would
Speaker 1: traditionally use a printer to print text or graphics on
Speaker 1: a piece of paper. Yeah, yeah, we UM, we thought
Speaker 1: it would be kind of fun to talk about some
Speaker 1: technologies that could be used in other ways that people
Speaker 1: have sort of repurposed, if you will. And this is, uh,
Speaker 1: this is what we thought would be fun to talk
Speaker 1: about because UM, an inkjet printer is something we think
Speaker 1: of as a very everyday thing. You know, you've got
Speaker 1: a couple of different kinds of printers. You've got an
Speaker 1: impact printer and a non impact printer. And basically the
Speaker 1: differences the impact printers are like the old daisy wheels,
Speaker 1: where um, the printer actually hits the paper, It actually
Speaker 1: touches the paper in some way. And in this case
Speaker 1: that I was just mentioning, it's a daisy shaped UM,
Speaker 1: what would you call a print head. I guess that
Speaker 1: where the type you know, the actual letter goes through
Speaker 1: the ribbon. You know, it hits the ribbon and makes
Speaker 1: an impression on paper. UM. And then there were a
Speaker 1: series of non impact printers, which is you know, far
Speaker 1: more common day the laser printers, uh, the ink jet printers. UM,
Speaker 1: different types of technologies there, but you know they don't
Speaker 1: actually touch the paper itself except the parts that feed
Speaker 1: the paper. UM, you know, through the right so we
Speaker 1: wanted to talk today about how these sort of printers
Speaker 1: have been used in in very novel ways in the
Speaker 1: medical field. Yeah, and not just the inkjet printers. But
Speaker 1: that's what we're gonna start off on because, uh, last
Speaker 1: year this being back in February, HP announced the first
Speaker 1: application of its ink jet technology in a non traditional
Speaker 1: printing role, which was all about printing chemicals when the
Speaker 1: with the specific purpose of helping pharmaceutical companies develop new drugs.
Speaker 1: And so you suddenly had these ink jet printers that
Speaker 1: were being uh tweaked so that instead of being a
Speaker 1: printer printer, it's now a medicine dispenser in a way.
Speaker 1: But to really get into the nitty gritty of this,
Speaker 1: we should probably talk about how a basic ink jet
Speaker 1: printer works. Now. It's, uh, it's the basic basics of
Speaker 1: it are pretty simple. I mean, you've got something that
Speaker 1: feeds the paper through the machine and something that sprays
Speaker 1: ink onto the page. Now right now, of course, if
Speaker 1: it just feeds the paper through and sprays the ink,
Speaker 1: you can have a covered piece of paper with nothing
Speaker 1: on it. So you kind of have to have some
Speaker 1: way of making the you know, the stuff that you
Speaker 1: want to print, show up the way you want it printed,
Speaker 1: the letters on the page of a letter or um. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you want to print a photo, you want the
Speaker 1: colors to appear in the in the right order, and
Speaker 1: you want everything to be nice and sharp and uh
Speaker 1: and and and have a good definition. Otherwise you just
Speaker 1: kind of have this messy look. So you have to
Speaker 1: be able to make these drops really really really small,
Speaker 1: these drops of ink, because otherwise you would, you know,
Speaker 1: you would you would not be able to make those
Speaker 1: definitions between things like hard angles versus a soft curve,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, all the fonts would look the same,
Speaker 1: and just you wouldn't be able to create something that
Speaker 1: looks crisp and clear. So the way inkjet printers do
Speaker 1: this is they use hundreds of tiny, tiny, tiny nozzles
Speaker 1: that spray out drops of ink that are incredibly small. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now I can tell you the first the first ink
Speaker 1: jet printer I ever owned was in the mid eighties. Specifically,
Speaker 1: um and uh, you know, there there are things that
Speaker 1: go into an inkjet printer's quality that that have improved
Speaker 1: significantly over this time. The ability to uh, to spray
Speaker 1: that mix the different colors, to make other colors. UM.
Speaker 1: You know the basic four color printing process cyan, magenta,
Speaker 1: yellow and c M y K, the K being black. UM.
Speaker 1: You know those those have gotten that the ability to
Speaker 1: to mix those has gotten so much more sophisticated. UM.
Speaker 1: There are other things that factor into it too that
Speaker 1: just that I want to mention paper U two has
Speaker 1: been has factored into this, to the brightness of the
Speaker 1: white paper if you're using white, or the absorption of
Speaker 1: the ink. UM. The technology for all of these things
Speaker 1: has improved significantly over the short time that we've done this, UM,
Speaker 1: but the basic technology is still there. You've got a
Speaker 1: print head, UM, that is the part of the printer
Speaker 1: that's actually doing the printing. That's where all the nozzles
Speaker 1: are located. They're located on that print head, and of
Speaker 1: course the ink cartridges that go inside the printer that's
Speaker 1: supplying the ink. Obviously, the ink itself has gotten more
Speaker 1: sophisticated over over time, and in some cases, depending on
Speaker 1: the manufacturer and the technology behind it, UH, the print
Speaker 1: head may actually be part of the cartridge itself. UM.
Speaker 1: You may have an ink at printer at home, and
Speaker 1: if you do, UH, you may have seen that it's
Speaker 1: got a little something that looks like a little circuit
Speaker 1: board on there well, and that may very well be
Speaker 1: the actual print head, but you need a way to
Speaker 1: get it to scan across the paper, and that's what
Speaker 1: you have in your stepper motor. Basically, it's a part
Speaker 1: of the printer that drives across the paper, and the
Speaker 1: instructions that come from the computer to the printer tell
Speaker 1: the motor where to stop on the page that the
Speaker 1: print head can spray ink onto the paper. So we're
Speaker 1: talking about something that's really really precise because it has
Speaker 1: to be able to make incredibly tiny adjustments in order
Speaker 1: for these nozzles to spray the ink exactly where it
Speaker 1: needs to go, because you know, you're talking about a
Speaker 1: really tiny scale, like on microns or even smaller, so
Speaker 1: these are really really tiny adjustments. And in fact, there's
Speaker 1: also a stabilizer bar that helps keep that that print
Speaker 1: head on the very even act it needs to be
Speaker 1: in order to do its work. And it's that's the
Speaker 1: basic part of the printer, part of a of an
Speaker 1: ink jet printer. I mean, there's another entire section that
Speaker 1: involves pulling the paper through and feeding it through properly,
Speaker 1: which for the purposes of our discussion really don't factor
Speaker 1: in because the medical variation of this doesn't use paper.
Speaker 1: It's not pulling paper through in order to print out information.
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna drop it from there because there's
Speaker 1: just no point as far as the rest of this goes. However,
Speaker 1: I will say we have an article on our site
Speaker 1: about how ink jet printers work, so if you're just
Speaker 1: curious about the technology and and I want to learn
Speaker 1: more about it, We've got some animations and some illustrations
Speaker 1: there that really go into how these nozzles spray out
Speaker 1: these tiny drops of of inc. There's there's two basic
Speaker 1: versions that we talk about in the article. The thermal
Speaker 1: bubble version, where you have a a UH. You have
Speaker 1: a use resistors that generate heat to expand a piece
Speaker 1: within the nozzle that pushes the ink out, and then
Speaker 1: as the resistor drops in temperature UH, the material contracts,
Speaker 1: which pulls more ink into the nozzle and it does
Speaker 1: this very very rapidly, and that's what forces the ink
Speaker 1: out of the nozzle in these tiny, tiny, tiny drops.
Speaker 1: Then there's, of course, the the other version is the
Speaker 1: piezo electric UH ink jet printer that we talked about
Speaker 1: in that pod, not not the podcast, but in that article.
Speaker 1: And the piece of electric If you don't know what
Speaker 1: piece of electric means, that essentially means that if you
Speaker 1: have it's certain materials that if you run a current
Speaker 1: electricity through them, it changes the shape of the material,
Speaker 1: and vice versa. If you were to change the shape
Speaker 1: of the material, you would generate an electric current. UM.
Speaker 1: So the quartz crystal in a in a watch is
Speaker 1: an example of a piece of electric material. UM. And
Speaker 1: in this case you're talking about running a little current
Speaker 1: through and the piece of electric material changes shape and
Speaker 1: that's what pushes the ink through the nozzle and pulls
Speaker 1: more ink from the reservoir from the cartridge into the
Speaker 1: nozzle area. Uh. But there's more discussion about that in
Speaker 1: the article. I just figured that we should probably move
Speaker 1: into kind of transition into the way that that HP
Speaker 1: leverage this technology for the medical field. Yeah. Yeah. One
Speaker 1: thing that we didn't quite touch on unless I was
Speaker 1: sleeping through that, which is possible. Yeah, UM, was that
Speaker 1: the in in the inkjet process. Now you were talking
Speaker 1: about the piece of electric crystals um, and the piezo
Speaker 1: and the sorry in the inkjet process. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: each each of those nozzles has the ability to squirt
Speaker 1: droplets of ink, and one of the cool things about
Speaker 1: that is as a droplet leaves, it creates a tiny
Speaker 1: amount of suction which pulls more ink to the print head. UM.
Speaker 1: So you know, this technology is what enabled HP to
Speaker 1: do this is you know, the ability to have the
Speaker 1: droplets pull one another and that helps feed inc through
Speaker 1: or whatever it is that you're using in the printer
Speaker 1: UH to be able to pull more of the material out. UM.
Speaker 1: Of course, we talked about HP, UH, you know, some
Speaker 1: time ago in the podcast UH, and we talked about
Speaker 1: how one of the first things they were involved with
Speaker 1: was medical technology. A long time before the desktop computer
Speaker 1: came out, they were involved with this. So UH, it's
Speaker 1: certainly very natural that HP would be interested in UH
Speaker 1: combining it's it's medical technologies and its computer technologies. And
Speaker 1: I think they really came up with a novel idea. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in this case, you might be wondering, Okay, so
Speaker 1: why would you want to to print chemicals to create uh,
Speaker 1: to create pharmaceutical drugs And the answer to that is
Speaker 1: all about how pharmaceutical drugs are developed in the lab.
Speaker 1: It's a very methodical scientific process, and it has to
Speaker 1: be otherwise disaster can strike. So when you're developing a drug,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of different things you have to consider.
Speaker 1: For one thing, you have to consider the efficacy of
Speaker 1: the drug itself. Does it do what you need it
Speaker 1: to do? Does it actually uh, you know, what is
Speaker 1: the medicinal effect real? So there's that. That's an important part, one,
Speaker 1: probably the most important part. But then you also have
Speaker 1: to figure out the balance of the ingredients that make
Speaker 1: up that drug, because at certain levels it might be toxic.
Speaker 1: So you have to do a whole toxicology reports on
Speaker 1: whatever your drugs are, like what what dosage is the
Speaker 1: right amount for the average human being? And and the
Speaker 1: whole process can take depending on how many chemicals are
Speaker 1: going into this drug to create the molecules that make
Speaker 1: up the foundation of this drug. Uh, you might have
Speaker 1: of very different effects just by saying, well, if we
Speaker 1: put more of ingredient A and then ingredient B, here's
Speaker 1: the medicological effect the pharmacological effect, you know, And if
Speaker 1: we put more B and than A, the pharmacological effect
Speaker 1: may be entirely different. And determining the right balance is
Speaker 1: a challenge, right and it's a it's a painstaking process
Speaker 1: that that can take a lot of time. Um. Of course,
Speaker 1: if you're going by the scientific method, and uh for
Speaker 1: those of us have studied that in school. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty basic to us, but it wasn't, you know,
Speaker 1: many centuries ago. Um. You know, you have to you
Speaker 1: have to make one subtle adjustment to the process at
Speaker 1: every increment so that you know that that one thing
Speaker 1: is the only thing that you have changed. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: You have to mark it down and say, okay, well
Speaker 1: I've I've tried A with B. A with B doesn't work.
Speaker 1: Uh so and now I will try A with C.
Speaker 1: You know, and you have to make those subtle changes
Speaker 1: and and and it can take a lot of time
Speaker 1: to go through those things. Um. But HPS process of
Speaker 1: of going through this process has speed things, speeded things
Speaker 1: up significantly, I would think because um, one of the
Speaker 1: things they do in chemistry of all kinds, not just
Speaker 1: for a pharmacy is is titration. Um. And that's basically
Speaker 1: making these subtle delutions to see Um. You know, okay,
Speaker 1: so we've checked to see if a percent solution of
Speaker 1: this chemical will work. Um. Now let's try the solution. Now,
Speaker 1: let's try the percent solution and oh gee whiz, that's
Speaker 1: gonna take forever, right, you wanna you want to keep? Really,
Speaker 1: what you're looking for is you're trying to find the
Speaker 1: lowest amount of the active ingredient that will still bring
Speaker 1: about the effects you want in order to minimize any
Speaker 1: potential side effects you might have from a medication. What
Speaker 1: you you don't think gastro intestinal distress is a positive
Speaker 1: side effect? I rarely do. It can be a comedic one.
Speaker 1: I'll be right back as a matter of but at anything, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is a very painstaking process. Like Chris
Speaker 1: was saying, you have to be able to determine, all right, well,
Speaker 1: this is the specific level that we need to hit.
Speaker 1: This is this is how much of this drug versus
Speaker 1: this drug we need to hit in order to make
Speaker 1: this medication work. And uh, in general, in the lab,
Speaker 1: this can take a very long time. If you're doing
Speaker 1: this by hand, it takes forever time. I had to
Speaker 1: do this in chemistry, had to do titrations in chemistry.
Speaker 1: And you know, you remember you're counting each drop and
Speaker 1: you're measuring very carefully, and and when you're talking about
Speaker 1: measuring drops with titration. That's not terribly precise. No, you're
Speaker 1: talking about drops that are that are pretty large, I
Speaker 1: mean especially compared to what these printers can do so well.
Speaker 1: In high school chemistry, what they were trying to teach
Speaker 1: us is the basics they want to teach you, uh
Speaker 1: you know, how how the scientific method works, how uh
Speaker 1: chemistry works, if you will, and uh you know they're
Speaker 1: not we weren't trying to come up with a new uh,
Speaker 1: a new remedy for disease. Right, So the HP printers
Speaker 1: that can do this that they're digital dispensers, actually that's
Speaker 1: what they're called, but it's using that ink jet technology.
Speaker 1: What you're what you can do with these things is
Speaker 1: you can you get this little it's almost like a
Speaker 1: it's like a cartridge in a way. But what you
Speaker 1: can do is you can put a certain whatever chemicals
Speaker 1: you're working in, you you put a tiny little drop
Speaker 1: into one little reservoir for this ink jet printer essentially,
Speaker 1: and then you can put a second one in another compartment,
Speaker 1: and then you can program it the printer to mix
Speaker 1: those in different proportions with one another, so that you
Speaker 1: suddenly come up with all these different very precise mixtures
Speaker 1: of your various chemical compounds so that you can determine
Speaker 1: which one is the best for whatever drug you are
Speaker 1: developing at the time. And it does it very very quickly,
Speaker 1: so within half a minute. It can give you a
Speaker 1: full scale of titrations across a fairly broad spectrum, and
Speaker 1: it's doing it at a very precise method. When it
Speaker 1: was first announced back in in they were talking about
Speaker 1: a precision of around twenty Peco leaders. Now, Pico is
Speaker 1: smaller than nano, okay, so a Nano leader would be
Speaker 1: one billionth of a leader. A Peka leader is one
Speaker 1: trillionth of a leader. So when it was announced it
Speaker 1: was at a precision of twenty peak a leaders. Now
Speaker 1: it is according to HPS website on the subject, they've
Speaker 1: gotten it down to about thirteen Peka leaders, So it's
Speaker 1: even more precise now and it can do a titration
Speaker 1: of between thirteen Peako leaders up to ten micro leaders,
Speaker 1: and a micro leader is one millionth of a leader.
Speaker 1: Just think if we were trying to advance burrito technology,
Speaker 1: how much more precise we could get if we were
Speaker 1: going with more guio than just a pico to GUYO
Speaker 1: was that I was just waiting and waiting and like anyway,
Speaker 1: so yeah, the that hurt that one of the Uh,
Speaker 1: this doesn't really look I would advise you, if you're
Speaker 1: really interested in this, to to take a look at this.
Speaker 1: They do have videos of this process going on. It
Speaker 1: doesn't look like what we think of as a desktop
Speaker 1: ink jet printer. UM. It's it's these trays that it
Speaker 1: uses are are actually UM disposable to very important because
Speaker 1: you don't want any residue, no no UM. And it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of cool because it's a very small tray
Speaker 1: and they dropped the tray into the printer and then
Speaker 1: they can add the chemicals that they're using for the study,
Speaker 1: whichever study they're working on UM as they go. So uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's really kind of cool because they're not using
Speaker 1: the same print head that they would if they were
Speaker 1: say printing out their dissertations their studies on paper. But
Speaker 1: it's kind of cool to watch because it's you know,
Speaker 1: you can see it spray onto the paper using these trays, right,
Speaker 1: and it can also print into little like UM grids
Speaker 1: of containers. So in other words, you're you're printing out
Speaker 1: the the compound that you've created into little containers, so
Speaker 1: that then you can test each container and see what
Speaker 1: what affects that particular mixture will have, and whether or
Speaker 1: not you know one is better than another, and and
Speaker 1: which one you should really focus on. This really streamlines
Speaker 1: the development of of pharmaceuticals, and you know we're talking
Speaker 1: pharmaceuticals of course, is a multibillion dollar industry. And in theory,
Speaker 1: by streamlining the process, you could bring the costs of
Speaker 1: developing drugs down that again, in theory, could eventually pass
Speaker 1: on down the line so that those individual drugs are
Speaker 1: not as expensive as earlier drugs that took longer to develop.
Speaker 1: Right now, of course, that's all based upon the cost
Speaker 1: of production. It's not necessarily based upon the actual corporate
Speaker 1: behavior of a pharmaceutical company, which I cannot really talk
Speaker 1: about because it doesn't have anything to do with technology. Well,
Speaker 1: that has to do with economy. As a yeah, as
Speaker 1: as a corporate body that has responsibilities to shareholders, its
Speaker 1: point is to maximize profits while doing its business. But
Speaker 1: theoretically this this should also help them too, because they
Speaker 1: could probably deliver medicines more effectively and cheaply and still
Speaker 1: increase its bottom line in the process. UM also would
Speaker 1: speed up development of new medications UM. But there are
Speaker 1: also other benefits. People have talked about the possibility that uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we've we've talked about subdermal uh we haven't
Speaker 1: on this podcast, but you know, people in general have
Speaker 1: been discussing how the medical medical patches work, UM, the
Speaker 1: drug delivery patches that you put on your skin for
Speaker 1: different kinds of medications. UM. There there have been discussions
Speaker 1: that HP could use this technology to uh spray the
Speaker 1: medicine on a patch, and it could be something customized.
Speaker 1: For say, if Jonathan needs a specific formulation of a
Speaker 1: medication that would be different from the dosage that I
Speaker 1: would get, they would spray it onto you know, the
Speaker 1: patches for him and give him those, and they could
Speaker 1: use the same dispenser to spray the ones that they
Speaker 1: would give to me for a different formulation of medication
Speaker 1: would be a different concentration of the various ingredients. You're
Speaker 1: talking about personalized medicine at that point, because when you
Speaker 1: think about it, are our basic medications that we go
Speaker 1: out and we take, you know, whether they're tablets or
Speaker 1: capsules or whatever, they are based upon an average physiology
Speaker 1: for uh, you know, just the average patient for example,
Speaker 1: and that we don't necessarily fit that average. We may
Speaker 1: our physiologies are different, metabolisms are different, The other medications
Speaker 1: we're taking might have interactions with this medication, and so
Speaker 1: you know, one person might not need as much as
Speaker 1: the other, or it might interfere so they cannot give
Speaker 1: that person as much, right so you know, and when
Speaker 1: you go to the doctor and you get a prescription,
Speaker 1: you might have to get a different concentration of that
Speaker 1: drug than someone else would have. Or it might be
Speaker 1: something even more primitive, where it's just take half a
Speaker 1: tablet in the morning and a half tablet at night,
Speaker 1: as opposed to a full tablet, whereas Chris might have
Speaker 1: to take a full tablet each time. That's you know,
Speaker 1: these are not very precise, whereas in this case you're
Speaker 1: talking about tailoring medication to specific individuals so that you're
Speaker 1: getting the the most benefit from that medication with the
Speaker 1: fewest side effects. That's the real goal here, and and
Speaker 1: it's not the only way that this could put actually
Speaker 1: come about. There's another kind of technology again, it's an
Speaker 1: ink jet technology, but it's um it's a different methodology
Speaker 1: that is being explored by a company called Glaxo smith Klin,
Speaker 1: very large pharmaceutical company, and what they're looking at is
Speaker 1: the possibility of printing medication directly onto tablets. So the
Speaker 1: tablets themselves are really the they're the paper in the
Speaker 1: in the printer analogy, right, that's the tablets themselves have
Speaker 1: no medicinal quality to them. They are just what the
Speaker 1: medicine is printed on top of. So basically, if you
Speaker 1: took the tablets without any medicine sprayed onto them, they
Speaker 1: would effectively be a placebo. Yes, it would be almost
Speaker 1: you know, essentially the same thing as a sugar mill
Speaker 1: and a pluscebo. Placebos are great, man. I remember when
Speaker 1: I had a headache and I took three pluscebos. I
Speaker 1: almost odeed on placebo. A placebo is something that has
Speaker 1: no active ingredients in it. It's often used and if
Speaker 1: you if you're not unfamiliar with the term, it's often
Speaker 1: used in uh in in scientific tests in order to
Speaker 1: determine whether or not a quote unquote real drug is effective.
Speaker 1: So you you would take a a selection of people
Speaker 1: who all are are needing medication for some particular ailment,
Speaker 1: and it could be anything. It could be a physical ailment,
Speaker 1: could be emotional, mental, whatever. So you you've got this
Speaker 1: group of people and you divide them up into different groups.
Speaker 1: Your placebo group is your control group. These are people
Speaker 1: who are taking something that has no active ingredients in it,
Speaker 1: and they you know, they should not know that that
Speaker 1: It should be a blind test. In fact, if it's
Speaker 1: a really good test, it's double blind, meaning that the
Speaker 1: people who are administering the test also do not know
Speaker 1: if the drug that they are administering is in fact
Speaker 1: the real drug or the placebo version, because that way
Speaker 1: they can't give any information to the test group and
Speaker 1: influence their response. So you give the placebo to one
Speaker 1: control group, you give the drug to the test group,
Speaker 1: and then you do and then you compare the results. Now,
Speaker 1: this is a really complicated issue no matter what kind
Speaker 1: of test you're doing when you're talking about human beings,
Speaker 1: because uh, you know, we're all different. Yeah, so even
Speaker 1: if the drug is completely effective, because we're humans, uh,
Speaker 1: the results may not immediately tell you how effective that
Speaker 1: drug is. And that's so it's a it's a long
Speaker 1: process with lots and lots of testing before a drug
Speaker 1: can be said to be effective, and if you measure
Speaker 1: it against the performance of the placebo group. Let's say
Speaker 1: that the control group all says, oh, I felt so
Speaker 1: much better at taking that medication. It was amazing, and
Speaker 1: the test group says the same thing. Well, now you
Speaker 1: don't know because the placebo it was just as effective
Speaker 1: as the drug, which may mean that the drug has
Speaker 1: no medicinal effect. It may mean that the medicinal effect
Speaker 1: is negligible, or it may just mean that people's are silly. Yes,
Speaker 1: but anyway, that's the whole testing procedure. So with this
Speaker 1: this other printing medication on tablets process, you would get
Speaker 1: to a point where you could again very precisely control
Speaker 1: exactly what kind and how much and how concentrated the
Speaker 1: medicine is when you print it on the tablet. So
Speaker 1: in theory, you could again personalize medical treatment, although if
Speaker 1: you're talking about a mass production model, you're really not
Speaker 1: talking about personalization. You're just talking about a different way
Speaker 1: of producing medicine. Uh, there's some problems that they're facing
Speaker 1: with this, one of those being that currently, at least
Speaker 1: as of the recording of this podcast and the most
Speaker 1: recent research material I could get hold of, UH, this
Speaker 1: is only effective for half a percent of all medications
Speaker 1: that come in tablet form, So that means that only
Speaker 1: a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of all the different tablet
Speaker 1: medicines would benefit from this approach. They're hoping to improve
Speaker 1: processes and get that number up to so still fewer
Speaker 1: than half. Right. Well, and at one time, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: my grandfather was a pharmacist, so you know, but he
Speaker 1: was a pharmacist in the early twentieth century. UM, and
Speaker 1: back then, they they mix things at the pharmacy. Now
Speaker 1: today you can still find pharmacists who will do this. Uh.
Speaker 1: They're they typically refer to themselves as compounding pharmacists. So
Speaker 1: if you see a sign for a compounding pharmacy, basically
Speaker 1: what they're saying is, uh, you know, we mix special medications. UM.
Speaker 1: I've actually had to have uh something mixed up special
Speaker 1: for me. UM. And it's it's very weird to do
Speaker 1: this because you know, they get in there with the
Speaker 1: mortar and pestle and grind stuff up and mix stuff together.
Speaker 1: But if you go to your you know, the pharmacy
Speaker 1: in your grocery store or your um, you know, the
Speaker 1: department store, generally what they do is they order stuff
Speaker 1: and that can be inconvenient. Now you know, they say, well,
Speaker 1: I can't get that for you today. It's probably gonna
Speaker 1: be next Tuesday before I can get anything shipped in
Speaker 1: for us. Now, this this kind of technology, if it's
Speaker 1: on a patch or you can print it onto a tablet,
Speaker 1: might mean that they could get uh you know, the
Speaker 1: chemicals in and they can say, well, I can, I
Speaker 1: can mix up that concentration for you later this afternoon
Speaker 1: and you might get your medication a lot more quickly.
Speaker 1: They might be able to get more of the raw
Speaker 1: materials in. Now I don't know, uh, you know, if
Speaker 1: it's only effective for a certain amount of the um
Speaker 1: the population, then it may not be as effective, but
Speaker 1: it might help. On the other hand, that also might
Speaker 1: mean that they have a lot of raw stuff laying
Speaker 1: around that could be mixed to make other stuff. And
Speaker 1: as we know, pharmacies or targets for people who like
Speaker 1: to break in to steal stuff to make things that
Speaker 1: may or may not be legal essentially is what we're
Speaker 1: talking about. Um. But see there there again, there are
Speaker 1: benefits that this this technology could bring and also detriments
Speaker 1: like any kind of technology really, but um, the benefits
Speaker 1: are are enticing. Yeah, you know. Not not only are
Speaker 1: you talking about not only are you talking about personalized medication,
Speaker 1: uh and also a streamlined manufacturing process. You're also talking
Speaker 1: about the potential of this medication taking effect much more
Speaker 1: quickly than it would in a traditional format. So if
Speaker 1: you talk about a tablet where the medication is essentially
Speaker 1: baked into the tablet, you know, the digestive system takes
Speaker 1: a while to break that tablet down, and the medication
Speaker 1: gets into your your blood system, your circulatory system and
Speaker 1: is absorbed and however, whatever the the the the mechanical
Speaker 1: process is for that particular medication, because they are different. Um,
Speaker 1: if you're printing it on the outside of the tablet,
Speaker 1: then that's going to get absorbed much faster than it
Speaker 1: would if it were part of the tablet. So that's
Speaker 1: that's one potential benefit is that the the pharmacological effects
Speaker 1: would would kick in earlier than they would with other
Speaker 1: types of tablets. Well, sorry, go ahead, I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: And that that's sort of if you you are thinking of, uh,
Speaker 1: the ink jet printer in this case, printing on a
Speaker 1: row of tablets as though they were the paper in
Speaker 1: a desktop inkjet printer. But there's another way you could
Speaker 1: think about that, if you were thinking about something like
Speaker 1: three D printing, then the medicine could be all mixed
Speaker 1: together and printed out in the form of a tablet. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, we'll we'll talk about that in just a second. Uh.
Speaker 1: The one other thing I wanted to say about this
Speaker 1: tablet approach is that potentially you could even get to
Speaker 1: a point where you could print multiple drugs on a
Speaker 1: single tablet, which would mean that another benefit for the
Speaker 1: patient is that if they are on something like three
Speaker 1: or four medications, instead of having to take three or
Speaker 1: four tablets, they might only have to take one that
Speaker 1: has all of the different medications printed on it. And now,
Speaker 1: again because we're talking about all tablets right now, even
Speaker 1: at their the goal being, um, that's you know, the
Speaker 1: odds that re medication a person might need someone who
Speaker 1: has a lot of different prescriptions. Uh, the odds that
Speaker 1: they would be able to get all of those into
Speaker 1: one pill are not great. But it's a potential future
Speaker 1: for this technology. Sure. Yeah, they could print your your
Speaker 1: antihistamine and your allergy medication, and your multi vitamin altogether
Speaker 1: in one tablet. That's prescribed to you by your doctor
Speaker 1: and just give you all of it in one Now
Speaker 1: you wanted to talk a little bit about printing out skin. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. Um, I had forgotten about that. I completely
Speaker 1: blew the segway there. Yeah, this is something that It
Speaker 1: was funny because I was looking Jonathan and I both
Speaker 1: heard about the potential for for UH using these printers
Speaker 1: last year, and so I was looking for that, and
Speaker 1: in the process I found an article from actually quite
Speaker 1: a few years ago, from two thousand four. Um in
Speaker 1: I d G news UH from Susannah Patten, and what
Speaker 1: they were talking about was the possibility of using printers
Speaker 1: to print out skin, artificial skin for grafting purposes. Um,
Speaker 1: this would be really cool because um, not all skin
Speaker 1: graphs take. Now. They tried to get it from the
Speaker 1: from the patient who has been generally this is for
Speaker 1: burn victims. I actually knew a kid when I was
Speaker 1: growing up who suffered second and third degree burns along
Speaker 1: his legs and had to have an extensive skin graft
Speaker 1: and it was Yeah, they had to take it from
Speaker 1: further up his leg in order to to transplant it
Speaker 1: down on his leg, and it was a a very
Speaker 1: long and painful process for him. Yeah, I just I
Speaker 1: can't imagine. UM. But the problem, the problem is not
Speaker 1: all of that UM works as successfully as they would
Speaker 1: like it too, because you know, they have to cover
Speaker 1: the area or they're going to try to cover the area,
Speaker 1: and there may not be suitable skin on the patient
Speaker 1: available to do the graft. Uh. It can be you know,
Speaker 1: they're taking it from one place and and moving it
Speaker 1: to another, so they're you know, they're creating more injury
Speaker 1: if you will, in the process of don't always take
Speaker 1: and sometimes they shrink. And also there's a huge risk
Speaker 1: of infection. Yes, yes there are UM. They actually uh
Speaker 1: we're doing this at the University of South Carolina and
Speaker 1: uh they're using gel, a form of gel instead of paper. UM.
Speaker 1: So they are actually repurposing Now this isn't using a
Speaker 1: new technology. This was actually repurposing older printers with larger
Speaker 1: holes for nozzles. UM. So they this was you know,
Speaker 1: in the experimental process. But what they were doing was
Speaker 1: using this gel and and uh you know printing them
Speaker 1: the material that could be used for graphs. And the
Speaker 1: benefit here UM was that it could be you know,
Speaker 1: more suitable for printing to that specific area, and it
Speaker 1: was less likely to shrink because they were using this
Speaker 1: this artificial material, so it was really a better quality
Speaker 1: of material than the person's actual skin. Now, I didn't
Speaker 1: find a lot of information about whether or not this
Speaker 1: has been used currently, but this was done in two
Speaker 1: thousand four, and it's a very interesting thought. UM. They
Speaker 1: were also talking about the possibility of printing complete organs,
Speaker 1: which is also a three This would also be a
Speaker 1: three D process. UM. That's pretty amazing to think about, UM.
Speaker 1: And it's it's the kind of thing that obviously hasn't
Speaker 1: been used a lot as of right now. But you know,
Speaker 1: going forward now that three D printing is becoming very
Speaker 1: much a reality in the rapid prototyping. Well, we discuss
Speaker 1: this in a previous podcast to UM. You know this
Speaker 1: is this is very much a fairly common thing. Now.
Speaker 1: You can buy your own three D printer. Now they're
Speaker 1: not cheap and I'm not going to print out a
Speaker 1: human heart for you, but no. But but the idea
Speaker 1: is that you could use gels. I also found just
Speaker 1: as a quick convention, UM, scientists who are working on
Speaker 1: printing on gels for electrical connectivity, uh not not for
Speaker 1: for medicine, but for the purposes of electronics. So as
Speaker 1: the the work into printing on gels continues, in the
Speaker 1: work of printing for medicine continues, you can expect that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, these things are very much a possibility, and
Speaker 1: you know, may move very quickly in the years to come.
Speaker 1: And it's a very exciting thing to me because I
Speaker 1: love the idea of being able to print organs where
Speaker 1: you no longer have to worry upon worry about getting
Speaker 1: the right donor or if it's an organ that can
Speaker 1: be replaced with a mechanical version, and then of course
Speaker 1: you have to worry about other elements like your body
Speaker 1: rejecting it or whatever. When when you're talking about printing
Speaker 1: your own organs, you can think about a time in
Speaker 1: the future where we might be able to say this
Speaker 1: organ was printed specifically from this person's based on this
Speaker 1: person's DNA and their physiology, so that the likelihood of
Speaker 1: the body accepting the new organ is much higher than
Speaker 1: it would be if it were a traditional transplant, and
Speaker 1: so the survivability goes up. You don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about organ donors as much. You know, you you reduce
Speaker 1: the need for people to sit on a waiting list
Speaker 1: for a transplant for indeterminate amounts of time, and you know,
Speaker 1: that's a very that's an incredibly emotionally taxing situation to
Speaker 1: be in, you know, where you don't know if you're
Speaker 1: going to ever get the organ you need. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a race against time and there are people ahead
Speaker 1: of you. It's that's a tough situation. So the the
Speaker 1: benefits of this technology are enormous. It's really hard. I mean,
Speaker 1: I could not exaggerate how important it would be. Um
Speaker 1: but getting back into also three D printing and and
Speaker 1: closer to stuff that's happening on happening right now. You
Speaker 1: you alluded to it in the early, way too early,
Speaker 1: the attempted segue. Uh yeah, using three D printing to
Speaker 1: create drugs like like a like a capsule or a tablet.
Speaker 1: There's a professor actually the chair of chemistry at Glasgow
Speaker 1: University named Lee Cronin who was he had a ted
Speaker 1: talk about this. He's actually he's known for some pretty
Speaker 1: uh innovative ideas in various spaces. He's also a fellow
Speaker 1: who has really kind of he's got he's got a
Speaker 1: lot of goals. This guy one of them is to
Speaker 1: eventually create a create a life form like that was
Speaker 1: another one of his projects is not just creating um
Speaker 1: this three D printing drug thing. He also did ted
Speaker 1: talk about using a process to actually create a new form,
Speaker 1: a synthetic form of life. So he's got a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of synthetic fingers and synthetic pies out there,
Speaker 1: but he was talking about using three D printers to
Speaker 1: create to create drugs. And one of the ways he
Speaker 1: would the way they're talking about doing this is building
Speaker 1: first using a polymer called that they're calling reaction where,
Speaker 1: which would create essentially the reaction chamber for a chemical process. Right,
Speaker 1: because drugs are are in general they are the uh,
Speaker 1: the result of some sort of chemical reaction between various
Speaker 1: ingredients interacting together. Well, you can control somewhat the really
Speaker 1: you can completely control the concentration and effect of those
Speaker 1: drugs by not just the amount of the active ingredients
Speaker 1: that you introduce or the or the various ingredients that
Speaker 1: you introduce the don't necessarily have to be active, uh,
Speaker 1: not just controlling how much of each of those individual
Speaker 1: ingredients come in, but the size and shape of the
Speaker 1: reaction chamber, because that can control the speed of the
Speaker 1: chemical process, which can again affect what the outcome of
Speaker 1: that process will ultimately be. A fast process might result
Speaker 1: in a different type of drug than a slow process,
Speaker 1: even if you're using the same ingredients. So he came
Speaker 1: up with this idea, or he and his team came
Speaker 1: up with this idea of using this polymer to to
Speaker 1: print out very very precise reaction chambers and then using
Speaker 1: the same printer laying down layers of the various compounds
Speaker 1: that you would use for a drug, and the heavier
Speaker 1: compounds would be on top, the lighter compounds on the bottom,
Speaker 1: and essentially the heavier compounds would start to sink down
Speaker 1: into the lighter compounds and a very controlled chemical reaction
Speaker 1: would take place. Ultimately, he hopes to be able to
Speaker 1: lace this reaction where polymer with various catalysts and a
Speaker 1: catalyst course is something that that facilitates the chemical reaction. Right,
Speaker 1: So in other words, you would have an entire pharmacological
Speaker 1: lab reduced down to a tiny, tiny form factor because
Speaker 1: you're using a three D printer. That would be very cool,
Speaker 1: It would be really cool. And then his ultimate goal
Speaker 1: would be that people patients would be able to purchase
Speaker 1: a printer and take it home and connect it to
Speaker 1: their computer, and then they would buy essentially buy a
Speaker 1: drug recipe from whatever pharmacy or you know, whatever, whatever
Speaker 1: the the the vendor would be. But they would buy
Speaker 1: the drug recipe online, which would then download to their computer.
Speaker 1: They would send, you know, they would have to have
Speaker 1: the the basic ingredients whatever those basic ingredients are for
Speaker 1: that drug. But they would then send a print job
Speaker 1: essentially to their printer, and it would then print that
Speaker 1: medication out for them. So he actually compares his project
Speaker 1: to iTunes and the iPod. He says, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's all. It's an app. It's not the content. It's
Speaker 1: just the way of generating whatever it is. You know.
Speaker 1: It's it's your way to access content that's provided by
Speaker 1: other people. It's like a smartphone app in the sense
Speaker 1: that this is just the program that lets you do
Speaker 1: the stuff. The actual content is going to come from
Speaker 1: whatever the vendor is. So if you need to buy
Speaker 1: pain killer, you could purchase the pain killer recipe, send
Speaker 1: it to your printer, and print it out. Now, this
Speaker 1: is not that different from the other three D printer
Speaker 1: conversation we've had in the previous podcast, we talked about,
Speaker 1: you know, people designing stuff like let's say that someone
Speaker 1: designs a particularly nice table. The table just looks really cool.
Speaker 1: And then and then you can download, you know, purchase
Speaker 1: and download the schematic for that table, send it to
Speaker 1: a three D printer, and have it print out the
Speaker 1: various pieces you need to assemble that table. This is
Speaker 1: the same idea, except you're taking it to medicine as
Speaker 1: opposed to furniture or a toy or even a prototype
Speaker 1: whatever else you know, you would use a three D
Speaker 1: printer to create. So it's but it's the same basic approach.
Speaker 1: He's just like, why can't we apply this approach to medicine.
Speaker 1: If it works in this case, could it not work
Speaker 1: in this So that's what he and his team are
Speaker 1: working on now. They they're still you know, in the
Speaker 1: very early days of testing as far as this is concerned,
Speaker 1: but it's a very promising and interesting approach. Now people
Speaker 1: have already raised some concerns about the ultimate goal about
Speaker 1: being able to buy a printer. You know, these printers
Speaker 1: cost a couple thousand dollars. But when you when you
Speaker 1: when you compare that to the price of buying medication
Speaker 1: over time, that is not a big deal. Assuming that
Speaker 1: the raw materials are not as expensive as the medication
Speaker 1: would be, then you would be saving money in the
Speaker 1: long run, assuming you live long enough for that to
Speaker 1: benefit you. Right. So, if we live in a world
Speaker 1: where you can go out and buy a three D
Speaker 1: printer that can print medication in a world where you
Speaker 1: could buy a three right, Uh, one of the concerns is, well,
Speaker 1: let's say that this is not a pervasive technology. Let's
Speaker 1: say that it only goes out to a small percentage
Speaker 1: of the people in the world who can get hold
Speaker 1: of this, either because it's got a barrier economically, or
Speaker 1: perhaps it's a legal thing. You know, maybe it's legal
Speaker 1: in some areas but not in others. At any rate,
Speaker 1: Let's assume that only, uh, we'll say one percent, one
Speaker 1: percent of the world's population has access to this technology.
Speaker 1: For the purposes of this discussion, that one percent ends
Speaker 1: up going out and buying this printer, taking at home,
Speaker 1: and now they've got a drug printing machine. What stops
Speaker 1: that one percent from becoming drug dealers? Alright, that's that's
Speaker 1: the problem that people are saying. They're saying, well, if
Speaker 1: this is not a technology that everyone has access to.
Speaker 1: You have essentially made a whole bunch of people their
Speaker 1: own drug companies where they can they they will go out,
Speaker 1: they'll buy the recipe for whatever drug it is that
Speaker 1: they want to print, print out a whole bunch of them,
Speaker 1: and then essentially sell that drug in a black market.
Speaker 1: That a new black market would be generated because you
Speaker 1: would bypass the pharmaceutical companies and the pharmacies and the
Speaker 1: doctors and you would just have regular individuals, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of prescribing medication out to whoever wants it. So
Speaker 1: there are some concerns about that now. Uh. Corona and
Speaker 1: for his part, pretty much dismisses that. He says, you know,
Speaker 1: this is that you're worrying about something that's not even
Speaker 1: an issue yet, and when we get there, it won't
Speaker 1: be an issue. Um, but that's still you know, the
Speaker 1: critics have still been a little concerned with what could
Speaker 1: potentially happen. Well in three D printing, they've already been
Speaker 1: people upset that you can print a thing because you know,
Speaker 1: they've made things that weren't that weren't you know, a
Speaker 1: book or a piece of music or a film, and
Speaker 1: they said, oh, well, you know, we don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about people copying our uf we it's now there.
Speaker 1: I have read reports of people who make things three
Speaker 1: D things and they're going, wait, they're making our things right,
Speaker 1: So now we have to deal with this copyright thing
Speaker 1: because you could just make our stuff at home. You know,
Speaker 1: we saw the We saw the music world deal with
Speaker 1: this first, and then film and television and then books,
Speaker 1: so books and publishing. So we've seen major industries already
Speaker 1: have to deal with this. It just means that everything
Speaker 1: is going to have to deal with this. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know that's that's the crazy thing is that. And what
Speaker 1: will be funny is that I'm sure we're going to
Speaker 1: see the same sort of uh ham fisted mistakes being
Speaker 1: made by each industry. Like it's just like, seriously, people,
Speaker 1: did you not learn anything from the previous incarnations of
Speaker 1: this problem. Well, there these are industries that haven't necessarily
Speaker 1: typically had to deal with them, had to it. They're
Speaker 1: they're people who thought they were out of trouble and
Speaker 1: people who thought they were immune to it. That is
Speaker 1: another podcast. However, I did want to mention to really
Speaker 1: quickly because we're kind of going along, but um, there
Speaker 1: are also three D printers being used in other types
Speaker 1: of medicine tubs. UM. I have seen uh three D
Speaker 1: printing being used to create custom uh dental materials, um,
Speaker 1: you know, for people who who need uh implants or
Speaker 1: or you know those kinds of things. UM, and I
Speaker 1: know that they're using three D printing to create other
Speaker 1: types of implants, uh, you know obviously the harder physical
Speaker 1: material bone, things like replacing knee joints or hip joints, jawbones.
Speaker 1: That's just amazing. Yeah, the idea of just printing out
Speaker 1: on you whatever it is, which is great because again
Speaker 1: you can print print it at such precision that you
Speaker 1: can meet the needs of the patient much more readily
Speaker 1: than you could if you're talking about, you know, a
Speaker 1: one size fits all approach, because we're not all one
Speaker 1: size as it turns out. Yeah, Well, it's fascinating to
Speaker 1: think that you might be able to do X rays
Speaker 1: and cat scans and and things that that uh imaging
Speaker 1: that you would uh not have been able to use
Speaker 1: just a generation ago to get such precision precise measurements,
Speaker 1: put that information into a computer and print out what
Speaker 1: you need rather than having to you know, make a
Speaker 1: cast or you know whatever to to create a new
Speaker 1: one or go, h, you know what, you look like
Speaker 1: you might have a medium size hip. Let's throw that
Speaker 1: in there. I can't wait until I can't wait until
Speaker 1: I can print another version of me but better looking.
Speaker 1: Send in the clones. I think that's a good place
Speaker 1: to to end on this podcast. Yes, so this was
Speaker 1: a fun topic for us to take. You know, the
Speaker 1: idea of taking one form of technology and then reimagining
Speaker 1: or reinventing new ways of using that tech in ways
Speaker 1: that you know we didn't intend back when the technology
Speaker 1: was first built. Um, that's really fascinating to us. If
Speaker 1: you guys have any suggestions for topics that we should
Speaker 1: tackle in future episodes of tech Stuff, please let us know.
Speaker 1: You can send us an email or addresses tech stuff
Speaker 1: at Discovery dot com, or contact us on Facebook. For Twitter,
Speaker 1: you can find us at both of those locations with
Speaker 1: the handle tech Stuff. H S W and Chris and
Speaker 1: I will talk to you again really soon. For more
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