A fridge-sized machine can produce multiple pharmacy-quality medicines on demand in hours, and could make drug supply chains more resistant to disruption.

Klavs Jensen at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and his colleagues developed a machine that can synthesize hundreds to thousands of doses of four common drugs: diazepam, diphenhydramine, fluoxetine and lidocaine. Their 'plug-and-play' system can conduct multiple-step synthesis from commercial starting materials, and can also purify and crystallize the resulting compounds into a useable product.

Such a machine could one day allow on-demand production of medicines for hospitals, humanitarian operations and pharmaceutical research.

Science 352, 61–67 (2016)