Using an iPhone app to develop new drugs

Students at Rice University have recently designed an iPhone app that allows for an easier method of testing drug toxicity levels. They did this using a specials kind of bioassay. A bioassay is a process used to determine the potency of a substance on a living organism. This is essential for developing new drugs and modifying existing ones. The project at Rice used a solution of magnetic nano-particles which grab onto the cells being tested with the developing drug and levitates them in the solution using a magnetic field. This promotes the interactions of the cells and allows for a unique 3-D view which makes them easier to study as they grow and divide. An iPhone that has the app running is simply placed under a 96 well plate containing the cells in the solution and a special lens, then set to take pictures at desired intervals of time. “This literally collects about 100,000 data points during a 12-hour, overnight experiment,” explained one the Rice students working on the project. The app then puts the data collected through another analytic program. The end result is an organized array of charts, graphs and time lapse shots which one can look at to get a better understanding of the drug’s toxicity. This new process is expected to save companies tens of millions for each drug. I was interested in this article because I liked the idea of applying something like an iPod which are simple to obtain and use, the applying it to do something complex.

http://news.rice.edu/2013/10/28/have-ipod-will-test-for-drug-toxicity/