Bead technology could revolutionise drug laboratories

Drug laboratories could have their working practices revolutionised by a new innovation that claims to significantly reduce the amount of time taken to develop new therapies.

Lab-on-Bead was developed at Wake Forest University and consists of numerous tiny beads, each measuring 1,000th of the width of a human hair.

These numerous plastic beads are capable of screening for millions of different chemicals, all at once.

For drug-developing laboratories, that means the ability to match a drug to a disease marker without the need for additional steps.

An associated reduction in retesting is also possible, according to the researchers, who claim the technology could speed up drug development by as much as 10,000 times.

Speaking during the development of the technology, project director Jed Macosko said: "This process allows the beads to do the work for you."

He added that it raises the maximum number of drug candidates that can be screened in a day from hundreds of thousands to more than a billion.