Volker Hessel and his colleague professor Jan van Hest (Biomedical Engineering, TU/e) wants to combine the benefits of natural biochemical processes with sophisticated continuous reactor technology for such aims as making new and cheaper medicines.
“….Ben Feringa has just won the Nobel Prize for nano-machines; what we want to produce are micro-machines.”
And from Phys.org:
<< The production method for many drugs and chemicals is laborious, with a separate reactor for each chemical reaction. A research consortium led by TU/e professor Volker Hessel is taking a completely different approach. Within biological cells chains of reactions occur faultlessly next to and through each other. The researchers want to imitate this and so enable chains of reactions to occur simultaneously, within a single reactor. The goal is to make huge savings in terms of the production and development costs of drugs and create new opportunities for personalized drugs. The research, which has a four-million euro EU subsidy, begins in January.>>
Read the whole article here.October 7, 2016