The days of flasks, beakers and steaming test tubes could be a thing of the past as computers take over chemistry testing. Boffins working at UCLA have developed computer hardware to perform more than a thousand chemical reactions at once on a stamp-size, PC-controlled microchip. The system could accelerate the identification of potential drug candidates for treating diseases like cancer.

In the August 21 edition of the journal Lab on a Chip, which we get for the crossword, a team of UCLA chemists, biologists and engineers used microfluidic technology. This uses miniaturized devices to automatically handle and channel tiny amounts of liquids and chemicals too small to see. The chemical reactions were performed using in situ click chemistry, a technique often used to identify potential drug molecules that bind tightly to protein enzymes to either activate or inhibit an effect in a cell, and were analysed using mass spectrometry.

In the old days only a few chemical reactions could be produced on a chip, but the boffins have worked out a way to run multiple reactions. This means they can quickly screen which drug molecules so that they can work most effectively with a targeted protein enzyme. A thousand cycles of complex processes, including controlled sampling and mixing of a library of reagents and sequential microchannel rinsing, can be done in a few hours.