Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works in my Heart Radio and I love
Speaker 1: all things tech. And it is time once again for
Speaker 1: a classic episode of tech Stuff, where we bring you
Speaker 1: episodes from the deep dark archive of the more than
Speaker 1: eleven years worth of shows. And this particular episode originally
Speaker 1: aired on August twelve, two thousand twelve, and it is
Speaker 1: called Printing Medication. It's all about using printer technology to
Speaker 1: dispense medication, very similarly to how you would print a
Speaker 1: sheet of paper with an ink jet printer. I think
Speaker 1: it's a pretty fascinating subject. So let's listen in what
Speaker 1: to what Jonathan from the Past and his co host
Speaker 1: Chris Polette had to say on the subject. Shall we
Speaker 1: let's talk a bit about what we're actually going to
Speaker 1: discuss today though, Yes, so today we wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about inkjet printers some other kinds of printers, but not
Speaker 1: printers in the way that you would traditionally use the printer,
Speaker 1: you know, I think about you would traditionally use a
Speaker 1: printer to print text or graphics on a piece of paper. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we UM, we thought it would be kind of fun
Speaker 1: to talk about some technologies that could be used in
Speaker 1: other ways that people have sort of repurposed, if you will.
Speaker 1: And this is, uh, this is when we thought would
Speaker 1: be fun to talk about because, um, an inkjet printer
Speaker 1: is something we think of as a very everyday thing.
Speaker 1: You know, you've got a couple of different kinds of printers.
Speaker 1: You've got an impact printer and a non impact printer. Basically,
Speaker 1: the 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 the paper. Um. And then there were
Speaker 1: a series of non impact printers, which is you know,
Speaker 1: far more common day the laser printers, uh, the ink
Speaker 1: jet printers. UM, different types of technologies there, but you
Speaker 1: know they don't actually touch the paper itself except the
Speaker 1: parts that feed the paper, um, you know, through the right.
Speaker 1: So we wanted to talk today about how these sort
Speaker 1: of printers have been used in in very novel ways
Speaker 1: in the medical field. Yeah, and not just the ink
Speaker 1: jet printers. But that's what we're gonna start off on because, uh,
Speaker 1: last year, this being back in February, HP announced the
Speaker 1: first application of its ink jet technology in a non
Speaker 1: traditional printing role, which was all about printing chemicals when
Speaker 1: the with the specific purpose of helping pharmaceutical companies develop
Speaker 1: new drugs. And so you suddenly had these inkjet printers
Speaker 1: that we're being uh tweaked so that instead of it
Speaker 1: being a printer printer, it's now a medicine dispenser in
Speaker 1: a way. But to really get into the nitty gritty
Speaker 1: of this, we should probably talk about how a basic
Speaker 1: ink jet printer works. Now. It's, uh, it's the basic
Speaker 1: basics of it are pretty simple. I mean, you've got
Speaker 1: something that feeds the paper through the machine and something
Speaker 1: that sprays ink onto the page. Now right now, of course,
Speaker 1: if 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, and otherwise you
Speaker 1: just kind of have this messy look. So you have
Speaker 1: to 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 in jet printers
Speaker 1: do this is they use hundreds of tiny, tiny, tiny
Speaker 1: nozzles that spray out drops of ink that are incredibly small. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: I can tell you the first the first ink jet
Speaker 1: 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 mixed the different colors to make other colors. UM.
Speaker 1: You know the basic four color printing process cyan, magenta,
Speaker 1: yellow and black 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 two has been
Speaker 1: has factored into this, to the brightness of the white
Speaker 1: paper if you're using white, or the absorption of the ink. UM.
Speaker 1: The technology for all of these things has improved significantly
Speaker 1: over the short time that we've done this, UM, but
Speaker 1: the basic technology is still there. You've got a print head, UM,
Speaker 1: that is the part of the printer that's actually doing
Speaker 1: the printing. That's where all the nozzles are located. They're
Speaker 1: located on that print head, and of course the ink
Speaker 1: cartridges that go inside the printer that's supplying the ink. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the ink itself has gotten more sophisticated over over time,
Speaker 1: and in some cases, depending on the manufacturer and the
Speaker 1: technology behind it, UH, the print head may actually be
Speaker 1: part of the cartridge itself. UM. You may have an
Speaker 1: ink at printer at home, and if you do, uh,
Speaker 1: you may have seen that it's got a little something
Speaker 1: that looks like a little circuit board on there. Well,
Speaker 1: and that may very well be the actual print head,
Speaker 1: but you need a way to get it to scan
Speaker 1: across the paper, and that's what you have in your
Speaker 1: stepper motor. Basically, it's a part of the printer that
Speaker 1: drives across the paper, and the instructions that come from
Speaker 1: the computer to the printer tell the motor where to
Speaker 1: stop on the page that the print head can spray
Speaker 1: ink onto the paper. So we're talking about something that's
Speaker 1: really really precise because it has to be able to
Speaker 1: make incredibly tiny adjustments in order for these nozzles to
Speaker 1: spray the ink exactly where it needs to go, because
Speaker 1: you know, you're talking about a really tiny scale, like
Speaker 1: on microns or even smaller. So these are really really
Speaker 1: tiny adjustments. And in fact, there's also a stabilizer bar
Speaker 1: that helps keep that that print head on the very
Speaker 1: even track it needs to be in order to do
Speaker 1: its work. And it's that's the basic part of the printer,
Speaker 1: part of a of an inkjet printer. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: another entire section that involves pulling the paper through and
Speaker 1: feeding it through properly, which for the purposes of our discussion,
Speaker 1: really don't factor in because the medical variation of this
Speaker 1: doesn't use paper. It's not pulling paper through in order
Speaker 1: to print out information. So I'm just gonna drop it
Speaker 1: from there because there's just no point as far as
Speaker 1: the rest of this goes. However, I will say we
Speaker 1: have an article on our site about how inkjet printers work,
Speaker 1: so if you're just curious about the technology and and
Speaker 1: I want to learn more about it, We've got some
Speaker 1: animations and some illustrations there that really go into how
Speaker 1: these nozzles spray out these tiny drops of ink. There's
Speaker 1: there's two basic versions that we talk about in the article.
Speaker 1: The thermal bubble version, where you have a a UH.
Speaker 1: You have a use resistors that generate heat to expand
Speaker 1: a piece within the nozzle that pushes the ink out,
Speaker 1: and then as the resistor drops in temperature UH, the
Speaker 1: material contracts, which pulls more ink into the nozzle and
Speaker 1: it does this very very rapidly, and that's what forces
Speaker 1: the inc out of the nozzle in these tiny, tiny,
Speaker 1: tiny drops. Then there's, of course, the the other version
Speaker 1: is the piezo electric uh ink jet printer that we
Speaker 1: talked about in that pod, not not the podcast, in
Speaker 1: that article. And the piece of electric If you don't
Speaker 1: know what piece of electric means, that essentially means that
Speaker 1: if you have it's certain materials that if you run
Speaker 1: a current of electricity through them, it changes the shape
Speaker 1: of the material, and vice versa. If you were to
Speaker 1: change the shape of the material, you would generate an
Speaker 1: electric current. UM. So the quartz crystal in a in
Speaker 1: a watch is an example of a piece of electric material. UM.
Speaker 1: And in this case, you're talking about running a little
Speaker 1: current through and the piece of electric material changes shape
Speaker 1: and that's what pushes the ink through the nozzle and
Speaker 1: pulls more ink from the reservoir from the cartridge into
Speaker 1: the nozzle area. Uh. But there's more discussion about that
Speaker 1: in the article. I just figured that we should probably
Speaker 1: move into kind of transition into the way that that
Speaker 1: HP leverage this technology for the medical field. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One thing that we didn't quite touch on unless I
Speaker 1: was sleeping through that, which is possible, yeah, UM, was
Speaker 1: that the in in the inkjet process. Now you were
Speaker 1: talking about the piece of electric crystals UM and the
Speaker 1: piezo 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 it's certainly
Speaker 1: very natural that HP would be interested in UH combining
Speaker 1: it's it's medical technologies and its computer technologies. And I
Speaker 1: 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, right, does it do what you need
Speaker 1: it to do? Does it actually uh, you know, what
Speaker 1: is the medicinal effect real, So there's that. That's an
Speaker 1: important part one, probably the most important part. But then
Speaker 1: you also have to figure out the balance of the
Speaker 1: ingredients that make up that drug, because at certain levels
Speaker 1: it might be toxic. So you have to do a
Speaker 1: whole toxicology reports on whatever your drugs are, like what
Speaker 1: what dosage is the right amount for the average human being?
Speaker 1: And and the whole process can take depending on how
Speaker 1: many chemicals are going into this drug to create the
Speaker 1: molecules that make up the foundation of this drug. Uh,
Speaker 1: you might have very different effects just by saying, well,
Speaker 1: if we put more of ingredient A and then ingredient B,
Speaker 1: here's the medicological effect the pharmacological effect, you know, And
Speaker 1: if we put more B and than A, the pharmacological
Speaker 1: effect maybe 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 for those
Speaker 1: of us have studied that in school, you know, it's
Speaker 1: 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 solution of this
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: any rate, Yeah, this is this is a very painstaking process.
Speaker 1: Like Chris was saying, you have to be able to determine,
Speaker 1: all right, well, this is the specific level that we
Speaker 1: need to hit. This is this is how much of
Speaker 1: this drug versus this drug we need to hit in
Speaker 1: order to make this medication work. And uh, in general,
Speaker 1: in the lab, this can take a very long time.
Speaker 1: If you're doing this by hand, it takes forever time.
Speaker 1: I had to do this in chemistry. I had to
Speaker 1: do titrations in chemistry. And you know, you remember you're
Speaker 1: counting each drop and you're measuring very carefully. And when
Speaker 1: you're talking about measuring drops with titration that's not terribly precise.
Speaker 1: You're talking about drops that are that are pretty large,
Speaker 1: I mean especially compared to what these printers can do
Speaker 1: so well. In high school chemistry, what they were trying
Speaker 1: to teach us is the basics they want to teach you,
Speaker 1: uh you know, how how the scientific method works, how
Speaker 1: uh chemistry works, if you will, and uh you know
Speaker 1: they're not we weren't trying to come up with a
Speaker 1: new uh a new remedy for a disease. Right, So
Speaker 1: the HP printers that can do this that they're digital
Speaker 1: dispensers actually that's what they're called, but it's using that
Speaker 1: ink jet technology. What you're what you can do with
Speaker 1: these things is you can you get this little it's
Speaker 1: almost like a it's like a cartridge in a way.
Speaker 1: But what you can do is you can put a
Speaker 1: certain whatever chemicals you're working in. You you put a
Speaker 1: tiny little drop into one little reservoir for this ink
Speaker 1: jet printer essentially, and then you can put a second
Speaker 1: one in another compartment, and then you can program it
Speaker 1: the printer to mix those in different proportions with one another,
Speaker 1: so that you suddenly come up with all these different,
Speaker 1: very precise mixtures of your various chemical compounds, so that
Speaker 1: you can determine which one is the best for whatever
Speaker 1: rug you are developing at the time. And it does
Speaker 1: it very very quickly, so within half a minute, it
Speaker 1: can give you a full scale of titrations across a
Speaker 1: fairly broad spectrum. And it's doing it at a very
Speaker 1: precise method. When it was first announced back in inn
Speaker 1: they were talking about a precision of around twenty Peco leaders. Now,
Speaker 1: Pico is smaller than Nano, okay, so a Nano leader
Speaker 1: would be one billionth of a leader. A Peka leader
Speaker 1: is one trillionth of a leader. So when it was
Speaker 1: announced it was at a precision of twenty Peko leaders.
Speaker 1: Now it is According to HPS website on the subject,
Speaker 1: they've gotten it down to about thirteen Peka leaders, So
Speaker 1: it's even more precise now and it can do a
Speaker 1: titration 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: That was a long way for that. I was just
Speaker 1: waiting and waiting and like anyway, so yeah, the that
Speaker 1: hurt that one of the Uh, this doesn't really look
Speaker 1: I would advise you, if you're really interested in this,
Speaker 1: to take a look at this. They do have videos
Speaker 1: of this process going on. It doesn't look like what
Speaker 1: we think of as a desktop ink jet printer. UM.
Speaker 1: It's it's these trays that it uses are are actually
Speaker 1: UM disposable to very important because you don't want any residue,
Speaker 1: no no UM. And it's it's kind of cool because
Speaker 1: it's a very small tray and they dropped the tray
Speaker 1: into the printer and then they can add the chemicals
Speaker 1: that they're using for the study, whichever study they're working
Speaker 1: on UM as they go. So uh, it's it's really
Speaker 1: kind of cool because they're not using the same print
Speaker 1: head that they would if they were, say printing out
Speaker 1: their dissertations from their studies on paper. And it's to
Speaker 1: watch because it's you know, you can see it spray
Speaker 1: onto the paper using these trays, right, and it can
Speaker 1: also print into little like UM grids. Of containers. So
Speaker 1: in other words, you're you're printing out the big compound
Speaker 1: that you've created into little containers so that then you
Speaker 1: can test each container and see what what affects that
Speaker 1: particular mixture will have and whether or not you know
Speaker 1: one is better than another, and which one you should
Speaker 1: really focus on. This really streamlines the development of of pharmaceuticals,
Speaker 1: and you know we're talking pharmaceuticals of course, is a
Speaker 1: multibillion dollar industry, and in theory, by streamlining the process,
Speaker 1: you could bring the costs of developing drugs down that again,
Speaker 1: in theory could eventually pass on uh down the line
Speaker 1: so that those individual drugs are not as expensive as
Speaker 1: earlier drugs that took longer to develop. Right now, of course,
Speaker 1: that's all based upon the cost of production. It's not
Speaker 1: necessarily based upon the actual corporate behavior of a pharmaceutical company,
Speaker 1: which I cannot really talk about because it doesn't have
Speaker 1: anything to do with technology. Well, that has to do
Speaker 1: with economy. As a yeah, as as a corporate body
Speaker 1: that has responsibilities to shareholders, its point is to maximize
Speaker 1: profits while doing its business. But theoretically this this should
Speaker 1: also help them too, because they could probably deliver medicines
Speaker 1: more effectively and cheaply, and still increase its bottom line
Speaker 1: in the process. UM also would speed up development of
Speaker 1: new medications UM. But there are also other benefits. People
Speaker 1: have talked about the possibility that uh, you know, we
Speaker 1: we've talked about subdermal uh we haven't on this podcast,
Speaker 1: but you know, people in general have been discussing how
Speaker 1: the medical medical patches work, UM, the drug delivery patches
Speaker 1: that you put on your skin for different kinds of medications. UM.
Speaker 1: There there have been discussions that HP could use this
Speaker 1: technology to uh spray the medicine on a patch, and
Speaker 1: it could be something customized. For say, if Jonathan needs
Speaker 1: a specific formulation of a medication that would be different
Speaker 1: from the dosage that I would get, they would spray
Speaker 1: it onto, you know, the patches for him and give
Speaker 1: him those, and they could use the same dispenser to
Speaker 1: spray the ones that they would give to me for
Speaker 1: a different formulation of the medication, be a different concentration
Speaker 1: of the various ingredients. You're talking about personalized medicine at
Speaker 1: that point, because when you think about it, are our
Speaker 1: basic medications that we go out and we take, you know,
Speaker 1: whether they're tablets or capsules or whatever. They are based
Speaker 1: upon an average physiology for uh, you know, just the
Speaker 1: average patient, for example, and that we don't necessarily fit
Speaker 1: that average. We may our physiologies are different, metabolisms are different,
Speaker 1: The other medications we're taking might have interactions with this medication,
Speaker 1: so you know, one person might not need as much
Speaker 1: as the other, or it might interfere so they cannot
Speaker 1: give that person as much, right so, you know, and
Speaker 1: when 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 potentially come about.
Speaker 1: There's another kind of technology again, it's an ink jet technology,
Speaker 1: but it's um it's a different methodology that is being
Speaker 1: explored by a company called Glaxo Smith Kleine, very large
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical company, and what they're looking at is the possibility
Speaker 1: of printing medication directly onto tablets. So the tablets themselves
Speaker 1: are really the they're the paper in the in the
Speaker 1: printer analogy, right, that's the tablets themselves have no medicinal
Speaker 1: quality to them. They are just what the medicine is
Speaker 1: printed on top of. So basically, if you took the
Speaker 1: tablets without any medicine sprayed onto them, they would effectively
Speaker 1: be a placebo. Yes, it would be almost you know,
Speaker 1: essentially the same thing as a sugar mill and a
Speaker 1: plus sebo. Placebos are great, man. I remember when I
Speaker 1: had a headache and I took three plus sebos. I
Speaker 1: almost odeed on placebo. Hey, it's Jonathan from two thousand nineteen,
Speaker 1: butting in here just go. Wanted to let you know
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be
Speaker 1: right back with more printing medication. A placebo is something
Speaker 1: that has no active ingredients in it. It's often used
Speaker 1: and if you if you're not unfamiliar with the term.
Speaker 1: It's often used in uh in in scientific tests in
Speaker 1: order to determine whether or not a quote unquote real
Speaker 1: drug is effective. So you you would take a a
Speaker 1: selection of people who all are are needing medication for
Speaker 1: some particular ailment. And it could be anything. It could
Speaker 1: be a physical ailment, could be emotional, mental, whatever. So
Speaker 1: you you've got this group of people and you divide
Speaker 1: them up into different groups. Your place cico group is
Speaker 1: your control group. These are people who are taking something
Speaker 1: that has no active ingredients in it, and they you know,
Speaker 1: they should not know that that it should be a
Speaker 1: blind test. In fact, if it's a really good test,
Speaker 1: it's double blind, meaning that the people who are administering
Speaker 1: the test also do not know if the drug that
Speaker 1: they are administering is in fact the real drug or
Speaker 1: the placebo version, because that way they can't give any
Speaker 1: information to the test group and influence their response. So
Speaker 1: you give the placebo to one control group, you give
Speaker 1: the drug to the test group, and then you do
Speaker 1: and then you compare the results. Now, this is a
Speaker 1: really complicated issue no matter what kind of test you're
Speaker 1: doing when you're talking about human beings, because uh you know,
Speaker 1: we're all different. Yeah, So even if the drug is
Speaker 1: completely effective, because we're humans, uh, the results may not
Speaker 1: immediately tell you how effective that drug is. And that's
Speaker 1: so it's a it's a long process with lots and
Speaker 1: lots of testing before a drug can be said to
Speaker 1: be effective. And if you measure it against the performance
Speaker 1: of the placebo group. Let's say that the control group
Speaker 1: all says, oh, I felt so much better at taking
Speaker 1: that medication. It was amazing, and the test group says
Speaker 1: the same thing. Well, now you don't know, because the
Speaker 1: placebo it was just as effective as the drug, which
Speaker 1: may mean that the drug has no medicinal effect. It
Speaker 1: may mean that the medicinal effect is negligible, or it
Speaker 1: may just mean that people's are silly. But anyway, that's
Speaker 1: the whole testing procedure. So with this this other printing
Speaker 1: medication on tablets process, you would get to a point
Speaker 1: where you could again very precisely control exactly what kind
Speaker 1: and how much and how concentrated the medicine is when
Speaker 1: you print it on the tablet. So in theory you
Speaker 1: could again personalize medical treatment. Although if you're talking about
Speaker 1: a mass production model, you're really not talking about personalization.
Speaker 1: You're just talking about a different way of producing medicine. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's some problems that they're facing with this. One of
Speaker 1: those being that currently, at least as of the recording
Speaker 1: of this podcast and the most recent research material I
Speaker 1: could get hold of, uh, this is only effective for
Speaker 1: half a percent of all medications that come in tablet form.
Speaker 1: So that means that only a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction
Speaker 1: of all the different tablet medicines would benefit from this approach.
Speaker 1: They're hoping to improve processes and get that number up
Speaker 1: to so still fewer than half. Right. Well, and at
Speaker 1: one time, uh, you know, my grandfather was a pharmacist,
Speaker 1: so you know, but he was a pharmacist in the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century. Um, And back then, they they mix
Speaker 1: things at the pharmacy. Now today you can still find
Speaker 1: pharmacists who will do this. Uh. They're they typically refer
Speaker 1: to themselves as compounding pharmacists. So if you see a
Speaker 1: sign for a compounding pharmacy, basically what they're saying is, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we mix special medications. UM. I've actually had
Speaker 1: to have uh something mixed up special for me. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's it's very weird to do this because you know,
Speaker 1: they get in there with the mortar and pestle and
Speaker 1: grind stuff up and mix stuff together. But if you
Speaker 1: go to your you know, the pharmacy in your grocery
Speaker 1: store or your um, you know, the department store, generally
Speaker 1: what they do is they order stuff and that can
Speaker 1: be inconvenient. Now, you know, they say, well, I can't
Speaker 1: get that for you today. It's probably gonna be next
Speaker 1: Tuesday before I can get anything shipped in for us. Now,
Speaker 1: this this kind of technology, if it's on a patch
Speaker 1: or you can print it onto a tablet, might mean
Speaker 1: that they could get uh, you know, the chemicals in
Speaker 1: and they can say, well, I can I can mix
Speaker 1: up that concentration for you later this afternoon. You might
Speaker 1: get your medication a lot more quickly. They might be
Speaker 1: able to get more of the raw materials in. Now
Speaker 1: I don't know, uh, you know, if it's only effective
Speaker 1: for a certain amount of the um the population, and
Speaker 1: it may not be as effective, but it might help.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, that also might mean that they
Speaker 1: have a lot of ross off laying around that could
Speaker 1: be mixed to make other stuff. And as we know,
Speaker 1: pharmacies or targets for people who like to break in,
Speaker 1: to steal stuff, to make things that may or may
Speaker 1: not be legal, right, like illicit drugs. This is really
Speaker 1: what we're talking about. Um. But see there there again,
Speaker 1: there are benefits that this this technology could bring in
Speaker 1: also detriments. It's like any kind of technology really, but um,
Speaker 1: the benefits are are enticing, yeah, you know, and not
Speaker 1: not only are you talking about not only are you
Speaker 1: talking about personalized medication, uh, and also a streamlined manufacturing process.
Speaker 1: You're also talking about the potential of this medication taking
Speaker 1: effect much more quickly than it would in a traditional format.
Speaker 1: So if you talk about the tablet, where the medication
Speaker 1: is essentially baked into the tablet, you know, the digestive
Speaker 1: system takes a while to break that tablet down, and
Speaker 1: the medication gets into your your blood system, your circulatory
Speaker 1: system and is absorbed and however whatever the the the
Speaker 1: the mechanical process is for that particular medication, because they
Speaker 1: are different. Um, if you're printing it on the outside
Speaker 1: of the tablet, then that's going to get absorbed much
Speaker 1: faster than it would if it were part of the tablet.
Speaker 1: So that's that's one potential benefit is that the the
Speaker 1: pharmacological effects would would kick in earlier than they would
Speaker 1: with other types of tablets. Oh sorry, go ahead. I
Speaker 1: was gonna say then that that's sort of if you
Speaker 1: you are thinking of uh, the ink jet printer in
Speaker 1: this case, printing on a row of tablets as though
Speaker 1: they were the paper in a desktop ink jet printer.
Speaker 1: But there's another way you could think about that, if
Speaker 1: you were thinking about something like three D printing, then
Speaker 1: the medicine could be all mixed together and printed out
Speaker 1: in the form of a tablet. Yeah. In fact, we'll
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that in just a second. Uh. The
Speaker 1: one other thing I wanted to say about this tablet
Speaker 1: approach is that potentially you could even get to a
Speaker 1: point where you could print multiple drugs on a single tablet,
Speaker 1: which would mean that another benefit for the patient and
Speaker 1: is that if they are on something like three or
Speaker 1: four medications, instead of having to take three or four tablets,
Speaker 1: they might only have to take one that has all
Speaker 1: of the different medications printed on it. And now again,
Speaker 1: because we're talking about of all tablets right now, even
Speaker 1: at that there the goal being, um, that's you know,
Speaker 1: the odds that every medication a person might need, someone
Speaker 1: who has a lot of different prescriptions. Uh. The odds
Speaker 1: that they would be able to get all of those
Speaker 1: into one pill are not great, but it's a potential
Speaker 1: future for this technology. Sure. Yeah, they could print your
Speaker 1: your antihistamine and your allergy medication and your multi vitamin
Speaker 1: altogether in one tablet that's prescribed. Do you buy your
Speaker 1: doctor and just give you all of it in one
Speaker 1: one go. Yeah. Now you wanted to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about printing out skin. Oh, yeah, that's true. Um,
Speaker 1: I had forgotten about that. I completely blew the segway there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is something that It was funny because I was looking. Uh.
Speaker 1: Jonathan and I have both heard about the potential for
Speaker 1: for uh using these printers last year, and so I
Speaker 1: was looking for that and in the process I found
Speaker 1: an article from actually quite a few years ago, from
Speaker 1: two thousand four, UM in I d G News, UH
Speaker 1: from Susannah Patten, and what they were talking about was
Speaker 1: the possibility of using printers to print out skin, artificial
Speaker 1: skin for grafting purposes. UM. This would be really cool
Speaker 1: because um, not all skin graphs take now. And they
Speaker 1: tried to get it from the from the patient who
Speaker 1: has been uh generally this is for burn victims. I
Speaker 1: actually knew a kid when I was growing up who
Speaker 1: suffered second and third degree burns along his legs and
Speaker 1: had to have an extensive skin graft and it was Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had to take it from further up his leg
Speaker 1: in order to to transplant it down on his leg,
Speaker 1: and it was a a very long and painful says
Speaker 1: for him. Yeah, I just I can't imagine. Um. But
Speaker 1: the problem, the problem is not all of that works
Speaker 1: as successfully as they would like it too, because you know,
Speaker 1: they have to cover the area or they're going to
Speaker 1: try to cover the area, and there may not be
Speaker 1: suitable skin on the patient available to do the graft. Uh,
Speaker 1: it can be you know, they're taking it from one
Speaker 1: place and moving it to another, so they're you know,
Speaker 1: they're creating more injury if you will, in the process
Speaker 1: of crafts don't always take and sometimes they shrink. And
Speaker 1: also there's a huge risk of infection. Yes, yes there are. Um.
Speaker 1: They actually we're doing this at the University of South
Speaker 1: Carolina and uh they're using gel, a form of gel
Speaker 1: instead of paper. UM, so they are actually repurposing. Now
Speaker 1: this isn't using a new technology. This was actually repurposing
Speaker 1: older printers with larger holes for nozzles. UM. So they
Speaker 1: this was you know, when the parimental process. But what
Speaker 1: they were doing was using this gel and and uh
Speaker 1: you know, printing them the material that could be used
Speaker 1: for graphs. And the benefit here um was that it
Speaker 1: could be you know, more suitable for printing to that
Speaker 1: specific area, and it was less likely to shrink because
Speaker 1: they were using this this artificial material, so it was
Speaker 1: really a better quality of material than the person's actual skin. Now,
Speaker 1: I didn't find a lot of information about whether or
Speaker 1: not this has been used currently, but this was done
Speaker 1: in two thousand four, and it's a very interesting thought. UM.
Speaker 1: They 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 mention, 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: Chris and I have a little bit more to say
Speaker 1: about printing medication right after this break. It's a very
Speaker 1: exciting thing to me because I love the idea of
Speaker 1: being able to print organs where you no longer have
Speaker 1: to worry upon worry about getting the right donor or
Speaker 1: if it's an organ that can be replaced with a
Speaker 1: mechanical version, and then of course you have to worry
Speaker 1: about other elements like your body rejecting it or whatever.
Speaker 1: When you when you're talking about printing your own organs,
Speaker 1: you can think about a time in the future where
Speaker 1: we might be able to say this organ was printed
Speaker 1: specifically from this person's based on this person's DNA and
Speaker 1: their physiology, so that the likelihood of the body accepting
Speaker 1: the new organ is much higher than it would be
Speaker 1: if it were a traditional transplant, and so the survivability
Speaker 1: goes up. You don't have to worry about organ donors
Speaker 1: as much. You you reduce the need for people to
Speaker 1: sit on a waiting list for a transplant it for
Speaker 1: indeterminate amounts of time. And you know, that's a very
Speaker 1: that's an incredibly emotionally taxing situation to be in, you know,
Speaker 1: where you don't know if you're going to ever get
Speaker 1: the organ you need. You know, it's a race against time,
Speaker 1: and there are people ahead of you. It's that's a
Speaker 1: tough situation. So the benefits of this technology are enormous.
Speaker 1: It's really hard. I mean, I could not exaggerate how
Speaker 1: important it would be. Um. But getting back into also
Speaker 1: three D printing and and closer to stuff that's happening
Speaker 1: on happening right now. You you alluded to it in
Speaker 1: the early, way too early, the attempted segue, Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: using three D printing to create drugs like like a
Speaker 1: like a capsule or a tablet. There's a professor actually
Speaker 1: the chair of chemistry at Glasgow University named Lee Cronin
Speaker 1: who was he had a TED talk about this. He's
Speaker 1: actually he's known for some pretty uh innovative ideas in
Speaker 1: various spaces. He's also a fellow who has really kind
Speaker 1: of he's got He's got a lot of goals this guy.
Speaker 1: One of them is to eventually create a create a
Speaker 1: life form like that was Another one of his projects
Speaker 1: is not just creating um this three D printing drug thing.
Speaker 1: He also did TED talk about using a process to
Speaker 1: actually create a new form, a synthetic form of life.
Speaker 1: So he's got a lot of a lot of synthetic
Speaker 1: fingers and synthetic pies out there, but he was talking
Speaker 1: about using three D printers to create to create UH drugs.
Speaker 1: And one of the ways he would the way they're
Speaker 1: talking about doing this is building first using a polymer
Speaker 1: called that they're calling reaction where, which would create essentially
Speaker 1: the reaction chamber for a chemical process. Right, because drugs
Speaker 1: are are in general they are the uh the result
Speaker 1: of some sort of chemical reaction between various ingredients interacting together, well,
Speaker 1: you can control somewhat the Really, you can completely control
Speaker 1: the concentration and effect of those drugs by not just
Speaker 1: the amount of the active ingredients that you introduce, or
Speaker 1: the or the various ingredients that you introduce the don't
Speaker 1: necessarily have to be active. Uh, not just controlling how
Speaker 1: much of each of those individual ingredients come in, but
Speaker 1: the size and shape of the reaction chamber, because that
Speaker 1: can control the speed of the chemical process, which can
Speaker 1: again affect what the outcome of that process will ultimately be.
Speaker 1: A fast process might result in a different type of
Speaker 1: drug than the slow process, even if you're using the
Speaker 1: same ingredients. So he came up with this idea, or
Speaker 1: he and his team came up with this idea of
Speaker 1: using the polymer to to print out very very precise
Speaker 1: reaction chambers, and then using the same printer laying down
Speaker 1: layers of the various compounds that you would use for
Speaker 1: a drug, and the heavier compounds would be on top,
Speaker 1: the lighter compounds on the bottom, and essentially the heavier
Speaker 1: compounds would start to sink down into the lighter compounds
Speaker 1: and a very controlled chemical reaction would take place. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: he hopes to be able to lace this reaction where
Speaker 1: polymer with various catalysts, and a catalyst of course, is
Speaker 1: something that that facilitates a chemical reaction, right, So in
Speaker 1: other words, you would have an entire pharmacological lab reduced
Speaker 1: down to a tiny, tiny form factor because you're using
Speaker 1: a three D printer. That would be very cool. It
Speaker 1: would be really cool. And then his ultimate goal would
Speaker 1: be that people patients would be able to purchase a
Speaker 1: printer and take it home and connected to their computer
Speaker 1: or and then they would buy essentially buy a drug
Speaker 1: recipe from whatever pharmacy or you know, whatever, whatever the
Speaker 1: the the vendor would be. But they would buy the
Speaker 1: 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 yeah, and then you can download, you know,
Speaker 1: purchase and download the schematic for that table, send it
Speaker 1: to a three D printer, and have it print out
Speaker 1: the various pieces you need to assemble that table. This
Speaker 1: is the same idea, except you're taking it to medicine
Speaker 1: as opposed to furniture or a toy or even a
Speaker 1: prototype whatever else you know, you would use a three
Speaker 1: D printer to create. So it's but it's the same
Speaker 1: basic approach. He's just like, why can't we apply this
Speaker 1: approach to medicine. If it works in this case, could
Speaker 1: it not work in this So that's what he and
Speaker 1: his team are working on now. They they're still, you know,
Speaker 1: in the very early days of testing as far as
Speaker 1: this is concerned, but it's a very promising and interesting approach. Now.
Speaker 1: People have already raised some concerns about the ultimate goal
Speaker 1: about being able to buy a printer. You know, these
Speaker 1: prinners cost a couple of thousand dollars. But when you
Speaker 1: when you when you compare that to the price of
Speaker 1: buying medication over time, that is not a big deal.
Speaker 1: Assuming that the raw materials are not as expensive as
Speaker 1: the medication would be, then you would be saving money
Speaker 1: in the long run, assuming you live long enough for
Speaker 1: that to benefit you. Right, So, if we live in
Speaker 1: a world where you can go out and buy a
Speaker 1: three D printer that can print medication, in a world
Speaker 1: where you could buy a three D wright, one of
Speaker 1: the concerns is, well, let's say that this is not
Speaker 1: a pervasive technology. Let's say that it only goes out
Speaker 1: to a small percentage of the people in the world
Speaker 1: who can get hold of this, either because it's got
Speaker 1: a barrier economically, or perhaps it's a legal thing. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's legal in some areas but not in others
Speaker 1: at any rate. Let's assume that only uh, we'll say
Speaker 1: one percent, one percent of the world's population has access
Speaker 1: to this technology. For the purposes of this discussion, that
Speaker 1: one percent ends up going out and buying this printer,
Speaker 1: taking at home, and now they've got a drug printing machine.
Speaker 1: What stops that one percent from becoming drug dealers? Alright?
Speaker 1: That's that's the problem that people are saying. They're saying, well,
Speaker 1: if 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 kind of
Speaker 1: prescribing medication out to whoever wants it. So there are
Speaker 1: some concerns about that now. Uh. Corona and for his part,
Speaker 1: pretty much dismisses that. He says, you know, this is
Speaker 1: that you're worrying about something that's not even an issue yet,
Speaker 1: and when we get there, it won't be an issue. Um,
Speaker 1: but that's still you know, the critics have still been
Speaker 1: a little concerned with what could potentially happen. Well, in
Speaker 1: three D printing, they've already been people upset that you
Speaker 1: can print a thing because you know, they've made things
Speaker 1: that weren't that weren't you know, a book or a
Speaker 1: piece of music or a film, and they said, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't have to worry about people copying
Speaker 1: our stuff. Well it's now there. I have read reports
Speaker 1: of people who make things three D things, and you
Speaker 1: know they're going, wait, they're making our things, right, So
Speaker 1: now we have to deal with this copyright thing because
Speaker 1: 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 know,
Speaker 1: that's that's the crazy thing is that. And what will
Speaker 1: be funny is that I'm sure we're going to see
Speaker 1: the same sort of uh ham fisted mistakes being made
Speaker 1: by each industry. Like it's just like, seriously, people, did
Speaker 1: you not learn anything from the previous incarnations of this problem. Well,
Speaker 1: there these are industries that haven't necessarily typically had to
Speaker 1: deal with them. Some of them had to it. They're
Speaker 1: there are people who thought they were out of trouble
Speaker 1: and people who thought they were immune to it. That
Speaker 1: is another podcast. However, I did want to mention to
Speaker 1: h really quickly because we're kind of going along. But um,
Speaker 1: there are also three D printers being used in other
Speaker 1: types of medicine. Two. UM. I have seen uh three
Speaker 1: D printing being used to create custom uh dental materials, um,
Speaker 1: you know, for people who need uh implants or or
Speaker 1: you know those kinds of things. Um. And I know
Speaker 1: that they're using three D printing to create other types
Speaker 1: of implants, uh, you know obviously the harder physical material
Speaker 1: 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 it at such precision that you can
Speaker 1: meet the needs of the patient much more readily than
Speaker 1: you could if you're talking about you know, a one
Speaker 1: size fits all approach, because we're not all one size
Speaker 1: as it turns out. Yeah, well, it's fascinating to think
Speaker 1: that you might be able to do X rays and
Speaker 1: cat scans and and things that that imaging that you
Speaker 1: would uh not have been able to use just a
Speaker 1: generation to go to get such precision precise measurements, put
Speaker 1: that information into a computer and print out what you
Speaker 1: need rather than having to you know, make a cast
Speaker 1: or you know whatever to to create a new one
Speaker 1: or go, h you know what you look like you
Speaker 1: might have a medium size hip. Let's throw that in there,
Speaker 1: all right. Then that rep up another classic episode of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. Hope you guys enjoyed it. If you have
Speaker 1: any suggestions for future episodes of tech stuff, not future
Speaker 1: classic episodes that would be weird that you can let
Speaker 1: me know, send me an email the addresses tech stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com, or drop me a
Speaker 1: line on social media. You can find all the links
Speaker 1: to that on our website that's text stuff podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: You also find an archive of all of our past episodes,
Speaker 1: not just the ones from two thousand twelve, and a
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Speaker 1: goes to help the show, and we greatly appreciate it,
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