NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Friday, October 2, 2015

One of the world’s most in-demand anaesthetics can now be produced on the spot, thanks to the thermos-flask sized device that recently won Flinders University inventor Professor Colin Raston an Ig Nobel prize.

Professor Raston and his team of researchers have successfully synthesised Lidocaine using their desktop Vortex Fluidic Device (VFD), in a development with huge implications for the traditional mass production methods of the global pharmaceuticals industry.

It’s so easy to produce Lidocaine with the VFD, which made global headlines earlier this year when it unboiled an egg, that the device’s inventor, Professor Colin Raston, says it could be made in even the most remote locations, with only basic instructions, in less than an hour.

Professor Raston says the ability to produce Lidocaine, one of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) ‘most important medicines for a basic healthcare system’, in high need areas such as war zone and developing countries signals a paradigm shift in pharmaceutical manufacture.

“The VFD uniquely controls how drug molecules can be made, and this is under continuous flow, such that research in making drug molecules can be readily translated into industry, avoiding conventional scale up problems and large reaction vessels – just leave the VFD running to make as much as you need,” he said.