HP speeds drug discovery research with inkjet technology

HP today announced an innovative drug research application for its inkjet technology that enables pharmaceutical companies to more efficiently develop better drugs through vastly more precise dispensing of dosages.

HP high-performance inkjet dispensing technology is now being used to speed the evaluation of how potential drug compounds impact biologic agents like cancer cells at very low concentrations. This new capability can help researchers significantly improve accuracy when evaluating drug safety and effectiveness, testing for drug interactions and developing new drugs.

HP’s methodology also can decrease expensive labware and biological fluid waste associated with complex, conventional testing methods, reducing research costs. The process also can improve productivity by eliminating many time-consuming and tedious steps in the drug discovery process.

HP is working with several leading pharmaceutical companies to incorporate its dispensing technology into their own work flows with very promising results.

"HP is leveraging a nearly 30-year history in inkjet technology development to address non-print markets under its own brand for the first time," said Mark Hanley, president of IT Strategies, an inkjet technology research firm. "Inkjet technology brings the same efficiencies to the drug discovery process that it brought to printing, allowing for on-demand, small-volume, high-precision production at costs significantly lower than existing analog processes."

Bringing new value to the pharmaceutical industry

Pharmaceutical companies invest nearly $16 billion in drug discovery research each year, evaluating novel chemical compounds as potential drugs to prevent or treat diseases such as diabetes or cancer.

"Current methods for drug dosing rely on costly manual or automated processes, which are time consuming, error prone and wasteful," said Kathy Tobin, vice president and general manager, Specialty Printing Systems, HP. "Our inkjet ‘scalable printing technology’ can precisely and rapidly dispense droplets that have one-third the width of a human hair, offering pharmaceutical companies the high-performance dispensing necessary to streamline critical R&D processes and speed drug discovery research."

By repurposing its most advanced inkjet technology to address the needs of this important market space, HP can quickly bring new value to the biopharmaceutical industry. HP continues to evaluate other important new market spaces, such as in-vitro diagnostics, where its inkjet technology can have a positive impact.