A million times faster: DNA nanotechnology could speed up pharmaceutical development while minimizing costs

A new tool speeds up the development of vaccines and other pharmaceutical products by more than 1 million times.

Thousands of related candidate molecule will be scanned in search of pharmaceutical agents. A novel technique allows this to take place on a smaller scale. The work is published in a journal.

There are more than 40,000 molecules that can be synthesized and analyzed. The method, developed through a highly interdisciplinary research effort in Denmark, promises to drastically reduce the amount of material, energy, and economic cost for pharmaceutical companies.

The method uses soap-like bubbles as containers. Multiple ingredients can be mixed in containers.

The use of material is so small that it can be compared to using one liter of water and one kilogram of material instead of the entire volumes of water in all oceans. The head of the team says that this is an unprecedented save in effort, material, manpower, and energy.

Mette G. Malle is a Postdoc researcher at Harvard University and the lead author of the article.

Results are within seven minutes.

The work was done in collaboration with the University of SouthernDenmark and the Hatzakis Group. The project was supported by a grant. The solution is called single particle combinatorial lipidic nanocontainer fusion.

The breakthrough involves the integration of elements from many different disciplines, including artificial intelligence.

No single element in our solution is completely new, but they have never been combined so perfectly.

Within seven minutes, the method provides results.

We have something that is very close to a live read-out. The setup can be moderate continuously based on the readings. Mette G. Malle expects this to be a key factor for industry wanting to implement the solution.

Had to keep things secret.

The individual researchers in the project don't know which companies will implement the new high-throughput method.

We didn't want others to publish something similar before us so we kept it quiet. "We could not engage in conversations with industry or other researchers that may use the method in various applications."

He can name some applications.

Both industry and academic groups involved in synthesis of long molecule such as polymers could be among the first to adopt the method. For pharmaceutical development, the same goes for ligands of relevance. A particular beauty of the method is that it can be integrated further, allowing for direct addition of a relevant application.

There are examples of RNA strings that could be used for screening and detecting and synthesizingRNA for future vaccines.

The setup allows for integration of SPARCLD with post-combinatorial readout for combinations of ligand reactions. Since we wanted to publish our methodology first, we have not been able to address this yet.

More information: Stefan Vogel, Single-particle combinatorial multiplexed liposome fusion mediated by DNA, Nature Chemistry (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41557-022-00912-5. www.nature.com/articles/s41557-022-00912-5 Journal information: Nature Chemistry Citation: A million times faster: DNA nanotechnology could speed up pharmaceutical development while minimizing costs (2022, April 4) retrieved 4 April 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-04-million-faster-dna-nanotechnology-pharmaceutical.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.