<p>*"David McQuade knows that nanotechnology is not always the best solution to technological problems. He and his team at [color=red]Florida State University have developed microspheres that can build a drug by connecting three simple building blocks in a single flask.</p>
<p>I was fascinated on Wednesday at the third International Conference on Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in Singapore when McQuade said that his new materials work better if they are several microns across rather than several nanometers.</p>
<p>Nanoscience may be all the rage, and nanoparticles have very high surface areas which make them fabulous catalysts. But nanoparticles are so small that they can be hard to filter out of a broth once a reaction is over. Using larger spheres is a worthwhile trade off to avoid the hassle of getting rid of particles so tiny that they are hard to filter.</p>
<p>Since the days of yore, chemists have made new molecules by mixing chemicals together in liquid solvents. In modern chemistry, they often add in a catalyst -- molecules that speed up chemical reactions or make them happen when they otherwise would not. To make complicated molecules, it can be necessary to use more than one catalyst. This is where professor McQuade has made his mark.</p>
<p>Catalysts don't always play nice together. McQuade explained how he can make two incompatible catalysts work well together.</p>
<p>His research group packages the catalysts in a tiny spheres of polymer so that they won't interfere with each other. The spheres are porous, so they allow the drug building blocks to drift in, bump into the catalyst, and react, but the holes are too small for the catalysts to come into direct contact with each other.</p>
<p>McQuade said he chose the drug pregabalin, sold as Lyrica by Pfizer, for this experiment because it is simple enough that a graduate student could probably find a way to make it in a reasonable amount of time. As a doctoral student in chemistry, that warmed my heart.</p>
<p>Pregabalin is used to treat everything from nerve pain to fibromyalgia. Like most drugs, the well-known methods for producing it are relatively inefficient. They require toxic chemicals and produce a lot of waste. By comparison, McQuade's method has a high yield -- meaning that most of the chemicals he mixes together eventually become the drug molecule.</p>
<p>Since he was a young professor at Cornell, he has had quite a track record of using high-tech materials to improve upon the synthesis of medications.*[/color]</p>
<p>For the complete article, see: <a href="http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/08/new-materials-t.html%5B/url%5D">http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/08/new-materials-t.html</a></p>