Jonathan Bell

Today, vaccines and other protein-based biologic drugs are typically made in large, dedicated manufacturing facilities. But that doesn’t always fit the need, and it could one day change. A team of researchers has engineered a miniaturized biopharmaceutical “factory” that could fit on a dining room table and produce hundreds to thousands of doses of a needed treatment in about three days.

Today there’s essentially one model for drug production: make as much as possible. But J. Christopher Love, a professor of chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has spent the last five years pursuing a different vision: a desktop drug manufacturing process that would be fast and nimble enough to help combat a small disease outbreak, treat an unusual cancer, or replace a rare enzyme.

An all-in-one bench-top system can churn out hundreds or thousands of doses of a medically useful protein in a few days — and can easily switch to manufacturing other proteins.