GRAND CHAMPION

MEDIMAKER

BY Odin Schaefer, Neil Ghosh & Arsh Shrivastava

Our idea is a modular, mini bioreactor capable of producing pharmaceutical drugs such as antibiotics in a quick and cheap way, capable of obtaining large batches of desired products. This product is made for those who do not have access to pharmacies, doctors, or medicines at all, with this target audience consisting of an estimated 2 billion people, according to the World Health Organisation, accounting for nearly a quarter of the globe. Our version of a bioreactor would be able to create the most basic medicines such as painkillers and insulin, requiring very basic genome editing, handled by the bioreactor, and simple materials, gathered by the people. In order to cut down on costs and bulk for people, certain controls such as pH and air pressure will be removed, however, it will still function as a bioreactor and create basic medicines for use, all at a cheaper cost. This will impact many people’s lives and broaden their access to medicine. This idea is also feasible to an extent as it is easy to manufacture and because similar bioreactors have also been made, with one main competitor being the Farma Bioreactor, which can also pharmaceutical drugs, but at higher costs. To create the actual bioreactor for use, we would have a cylindrical stainless-steel body, with rotating impeller blades as our agitation system and pumps for feeding nutrients to our culture medium. It would then have a limited amount of sensors controlling the variables of the culture medium. Finally, it would have a small pressure-swing adsorption chamber for liquid separation.

View Prototype (Fusion360 Model)