Portable chemistry lab can make drugs in warzones, deserts or even ‘surface of Mars’

Battlefield medics and bush doctors soon will have a portable chemistry 'lab' that makes drugs and vaccines on the go, scientists have revealed.

Currently, biopharmaceutical drugs to treat diabetes, cancer or vaccines are made in large, centralised factories and shipped across the globe.

This causes delays and can be expensive, particularly if they need to be shipped to undeveloped countries or remote regions of the world.

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Now scientists at the Massachusetts institute of Technology have made a portable device that produces drugs on demand.

The system is designed to use microbes to manufacture small amounts of vaccines and other therapies.

A study published in the journal Nature Communications showed the system can produce a single dose of treatment from a compact device containing a small droplet of cells in a liquid.

Scientists claim the system could go into battle to treat wounded soldiers or be used at "ground zero" to produce vaccines to stop an outbreak.

Associate Professor Tim Lu said: "Imagine you were on Mars or in a remote desert, without access to a full formulary, you could programme the yeast to produce drugs on demand locally."

The system is based on a programmable strain of yeast called Pichia pastoris, which can be made to express one of two therapeutic proteins when exposed to a particular chemical trigger.

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This yeast was chosen because it can grow to very high densities on simple and inexpensive carbon sources, and is able to produce large amounts of protein.

Prof Lu said: "We altered the yeast so it could be more easily genetically modified, and could include more than one therapeutic in its repertoire."