The UK-based €1.2m MagnaPharm project, funded under the Horizon 2020 ‘Future and Emerging Technologies’ programme, aims to improve the efficiency of pharmaceutical compounds by crystallising them in high magnetic fields.

The ability to do this would have a transformative effect on almost all pharmaceutical compounds, making them more effective in terms of getting into the bloodstream quicker.

MagnaPharm builds on the discovery by Dr Simon Hall’s group at the University of Bristol, UK, School of Chemistry that organic crystal growth can be controlled using magnetic fields.

Hall said: “The application of magnetic fields to intentionally control variations in the crystal structure of pharmaceuticals is entirely novel and opens up the possibility of producing drugs which are more effective.

“One can imagine, for example, being able to take a lower dose of a drug to get the same effect, or even to enable new drugs which have stalled in development due to solubility issues, to come to market.”

The new laboratory, one of only few of its kind in the UK, features four high-field electromagnets to enable crystallisation experiments.

With these electromagnets, Bristol will be able to act as a high-throughput screening centre for all the pharmaceutical targets under investigation.

The project initially targets 12 of the most high-profile, high-worth generic drugs with the aim of uncovering new crystal forms.

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