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The 3D Chemputer
Application of Technology from The Economists Printing a Bit of Me
Jeremy Bates
Alan Houth
Dominic Lakhotia
Ram Maramba
University of Texas at Dallas
Fall 2014

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Abstract
The article we selected discusses the creation of human organ tissue by means of 3D printing.
The possibility of successful bioprinting has many implications in the medical field including
safe testing of drugs, repairing tissue and muscle, and the potential to synthesize a complete
organ, though current technology is not advanced enough to design complex vascular systems.
It is with this emphasis on health and 3D printing that guided our groups focus to the
concept of 3D printing pharmaceuticals. Our creative process began with the idea of printing
living tissue. From there we considered the idea of printing the fungi found in penicillin. We
elected to take a less myopic approach by expanding the constraints placed on our concept,
which led to including all pharmaceutical drugs. Included in our report are technical feasibility
analysis, economic & political impact analysis, and the implementation of our proposed
concept.

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Overall Impact
The 3D printer revolution has democratized manufacturing, making high-fidelity production
accessible to individuals. While economies of scale will always exist, 3D printing allows for rapid
prototyping and soft manufacturing at reasonable operating costs aimed at consumers.
This intersection of technology and accessibility has produced two notable emergent
properties: portability and little to no penalty for prototyping. 3D printers, both turnkey and
custom built, are inherently small and movable. Retail products are designed to be deliverable
by freight and custom built products are normally based off of commercial off-the-shelf
products also delivered through consumer channels. Although highly software-dependent,
operating costs are kept low due to cheap consumables. These printers also use soft tooling,
requiring small or no fixturing to fabricate items.
These two traits make 3D printing an ideal solution to many long-standing issues with research
teams across all fields, but the value of these solutions is especially high in the medical arena.
The bioprinting company Organovo has taken advantage of these qualities, modifying small,
commercially available printers at its outset to rapidly produce and test synthesized human
tissue until finding a commercially viable and sound product to bring to market.
Before 3D printing, the techniques available to manufacture slivers of tissue were an intensive,
manual process. The volume of information gleaned from repeated prototyping and testing
provided by rapid prototyping would take years to accumulate. The cost of this expertise does
not come cheaply; costs would quickly become prohibitive to manufacture these prototypes by

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hand. With 3D printing, prototypes can be produced in under an hour and the process is
scalable once a viable product is found.
Applying these same traits to pharmaceutical manufacturing yields the same staggering results
with one important difference: medication is not nearly as fragile and does not require the
same care as manufactured human tissue. This further democratizes the process, making
pharmaceutical manufacturing accessible further down the supply chain, right down to the
consumer. Feasibly, customers will get better suited drugs faster as needed. This will reduce
cycle times, waste, and an ongoing process of trial and error before finding the right dosage
from off-the-shelf items.
Accessibility will no longer be an issue, but regulation will. Removing professional
intermediaries like pharmacies will also remove much needed inspection points and general
expertise. New regulation must be framed around direct access by consumers to already highlyregulated products. These changes must take an integrative approach, covering issues ranging
from product quality to abuse and illicit use. Chemistry is chemistry and the potential for abuse
of raw ingredients is a sizable hurdle.
The overall impact of this new process will largely be composed of balancing this newfound
accessibility within the proper guidelines of both medicine and the law. Fortunately,
prescription medication already has a robust policy framework. Wholesale changes will be slow
and will need constant adjustment, but the expertise and infrastructure already exists to
develop and police new regulation.

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The second emergent property of portability will have a significant, wide-reaching impact to
manufactured medicine. The constant need to stay on a drug regimen has implications to a
middle-income American family on vacation, poverty-stricken children in Metro Manila, or
researchers in the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica. The ability to bring a
consistent, continuous source of medication anywhere will change the face of personal
healthcare worldwide.
Printed pharmaceuticals are an intersectional concept, but the parts of the sum continue to
develop at a rapid pace. Canon and LG make pocket-sized photo printers using similar
technology to the original consumer printers modified by Organovo. As these new directional
technologies develop, advancements can be ported into the printed pharmaceutical industry.
Portable solutions with pre-measured materials will allow individuals to create customized
medications even in remote locations. Missionary doctors can synthesize specific compounds
for underserved children and adults in provincial areas. In isolated research facilities,
pharmacists can remotely manufacture medicine for minor ailments on a printer locally
accessible to researchers.
More importantly, as covered below, the economics of pharmaceutical medication will be
drastically altered, removing the cost and bureaucracy of middlemen between manufacturers
and consumers.

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Technical Feasibility
In 2011 at a TED conference, Lee Cronin, leader of a world-class team of chemists at Glasgow
University, spoke about his teams efforts to create inorganic life. In 2012, he returned to the
same stage to reveal his most recent research endeavor -- a 3D Chemputer that combines 3D
printing and the fundamentals of mechanosynthesis to create medicine.
Mechanosynthesis, put simply, is the construction of molecules using incredibly sophisticated
machinery that works at the atomic level. Dr. Mohamed Alhnan, lecturer in pharmaceutics at
the University of Central Lancashire, has patented a special 3D printer prototype that assembles
at the molecular level -- this printer could be adapted to print pharmaceutical compounds (The
Fix).
The filaments of Dr. Alhnans printer, which usually produce polymers, would be modified to
produce pharmaceutical compounds. These medical filaments have special properties that
enable them to be combined with antibacterial, and in particular, chemotherapeutic drug
compounds (Inside3dp). Pharmacists can infuse the filament with the appropriate dosage
requirement of a certain drug, and then use the Chemputer to transform the drug-infused
biomaterial into capsules or pills.
If implemented on a global scale, healthcare systems around the world would save hundreds of
millions of dollars every year spent on bulk production of medicine -- by moving control from
Big Pharma into the hands of the consumer, the entire distribution model of medicine would
be, in essence, flattened (The Week).

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This revolutionary device would put an end to the one size fits all dose, where patients have
historically been subjected to taking too much or too little of a prescribed drug. With some
medications, like those that treat liver disease, a fraction of a milligram of a drug makes a big
difference in the effects on an individual, and pharmaceutical laboratories have trouble
tailoring their drug production due to insurmountable costs (Telegraph).
With the Chemputer, chemicals and dosages could be tailored to meet each individuals specific
needs. Additionally, allergies and other health concerns can be edited out. Patients would
enter their prescription information at an online pharmacy and have access to chemical
blueprints and chemical ink. They could then print the drug in their own home with a 3D
molecular printer.
Political and Economic Feasibility
Whenever a truly disruptive innovation is born, one has to look at who will be affected by the
change. Inefficiency and redundancy breed both jobs and incomes. But, just because the
current framework provides jobs does not mean that it is appropriate to stick with the same
framework indefinitely. Just look at the U.S. agriculture industry; taxpayers effectively pay
American farmers wages through government subsidies. America could purchase its food from
other countries at a much more cost-effective rate than paying farmers in America for the same
goods. The reasons to subsidize local food sources: to reduce reliance on foreign sources and to
keep afloat an often, but not always, profitable industry.
It is counterintuitive for a nation to foot the bill for an obsolete industry. Logic would indicate
that it would be more advantageous for a country to focus its resources on the most advanced

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industries, areas where none of a nations competitors can rival them. Nevertheless, farm
subsidies are a complex issue with many players involved. Where truly radical change is
introduced, all the players involved must be taken into account.
First we can look at the manufacturers of pharmaceuticals. If consumers are able to print
medication, how does this affect the profits of the manufacturer? Manufacturers will not
willingly sell fewer products or generate less profit through sales. Perhaps they are increasing
their margins by not being forced to physically distribute their products. And what would they
be selling exactly? Possibly the physical materials needed to synthesize medications or the
blueprint needed to print the drugs. The blueprint might be licensed out and paid for annually
or as a onetime fee. Measures must be ensured to prevent piracy of pharmaceutical blueprints.
If the manufacturers stand to lose profit in any area of their business, they have the ability to
use their deep pockets and clout in Washington to purchase favorable legislation.
Intermediaries such as pharmacies will also need to consider how their business will be
impacted by the advent of 3D pharmaceutical printing. Stores like Walgreens and CVS are
basing their business models on the health aspects of everyday life. Would they have a place in
this new framework? They might stock materials for printing as opposed to the actual drugs. If
so, is this framework any more efficient than the current one? After-all, if the only change is in
the distribution of printing materials instead of drugs themselves, we must consider if
significant amounts of money are being saved. Perhaps the printing materials are very dense,
and by virtue more cost-effective than physical drugs.

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Finally we have to consider the end-consumers themselves. Would printing drugs be a cheaper
or otherwise more desirable alternative to the current framework? It is easy to believe that
purchasing the raw materials in mass would be more economical than buying synthesized
medications, but questions remain about the complexity of the process of actually printing the
drugs. Would it be worthwhile to average consumers, is the pressing question. One advantage
is the potential to print drugs that are not currently produced because there is not currently a
market large enough to justify manufacturing them. Chemistry professor Lee Chronin
elaborates, This model changes that economy of scale; it could makes any drug cost effective
(The Guardian). It is reasonable to presume that facilities such as retirement homes and
hospitals would benefit more from such technology rather than the end-consumers. It would be
advantageous for a retirement home to possess the capability of printing drugs as opposed to
relying on deliveries or dedicating employee time to retrieving them. In that sort of high
consumer-to-3D printer environment the marginal cost is decreased.
Implementation: Time and Cost
The disruptive innovation of products, services, experiences, and technology requires large
amounts of time to implement -- sometimes taking a lifetime for the founder or even passing
the task on to the next generation to ensure that it is implemented correctly and made a reality
as the perfect final product to the end users.
Likewise, the cost that comes along with disruptive innovation depends on the scale of the
business, resources, and how effectively those innovations can be managed in regards to cost

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leadership. As outlined in the article Printing a Bit of Me, a set of tissues used to reproduce
human organs can cost over $2000 for laboratory testing.
The nature of creativity and innovation of new ideas always come with a high price, with the
strategy of marketing towards less price-sensitive customers, with the eventual target of pricesensitive consumers as time goes by. Our research showed that the average implementation
time for 3d biotech printers can take up to 10 years to arrive in hospitals and pharmacies. It is
projected to take an extra five years for the technology to be disseminated among the general
public.
Today, these bioprinters can cost between $150,000 and $250,000. Six-figure products have a
hard time penetrating the average consumer market. In 2014, hospitals and pharmaceutical
firms are the only viable customers. Like most high-end technology appliances, these
insurmountable costs are projected to decrease exponentially over time (Medical News Today).
Conclusion
The advent of user-manufacturable pharmaceuticals will be an enormous undertaking, but the
benefits will far outweigh the consequences. The implications are far-reaching and making this
technology accessible will take extensive testing and development. However, the technology is
sound and an infrastructure is already in place to regulate the unprecedented access to
personalized pharmaceuticals brought about by the 3D Chemprinter.

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Works Cited
Adams, Tim. The Chemputer That Could Print Out Any Drug. The Guardian. Guardian
News, 21 July 2012. Web. 25 Nov. 2014.
<http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/jul/21/chemputer-that-prints-out-drugs>.
3D Printer Custom-Made Drugs: The Future of Medicine. Inside3dp. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Nov.
2014. <http://www.inside3dp.com/3d-printed-custom-made-drugs-future-medicine>.
3D Printed Drugs Could Revolutionise Prescriptions. The Telegraph. Telegraph Media
Group, 28 Apr. 0031. Web. 26 Nov. 2014.
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/11202016/3D-printed-drugs-could-revolutioniseprescriptions.html>.
3D Printing Could Revolutionize Drugs. The Fix. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Nov. 2014.
<http://www.thefix.com/content/we-could-soon-3d-print-drugs-home91839>.
3D Printing May Make Individualized Medicine More Affordable. Medical News Today.
MediLexicon International, 25 Oct. 2014. Web. 01 Dec. 2014.
<http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/284381.php>.
Can You 3d Print Drugs? The Week. N.p., n.d. 26 Nov. 2014.
<http://theweek.com/article/index/246091/can-you-3d-print-drugs>.