The COVID-19 post-apocalyptic laboratory

COVID-19 后世界末日实验室

• 批准号: 570902-2021
• 负责人: Organ, MichaelMG
• 金额: $ 19.67万
• 依托单位: University of Ottawa
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Alliance Grants
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=747580
• 关键词: COVID; 19; post; apocalyptic; laboratory

The current COVID-19 pandemic has exposed Canada's glaring inability to effectively supply its population with essential compounds for medical applications. Canada's incapacity to prepare a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine and anti-bacterials to treat the resultant lung superinfections, have left all Canadians vulnerable and our economy languishing. According to Drug Shortages Canada, there 15 critical shortages or discontinuations of essential medications in Canada; this is unacceptable for a G8 nation and threatens our security. Conventional synthesis of drug molecules uses technologies that are vast in scale employing large batch reactors that require tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in capital investments. Further, the failure of an advanced-stage synthetic batch for a critical drug can cause an operating loss of hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. It is hard for Canadian business to build a case to take on such risks given the comparatively small market in Canada. An alternative strategy is to synthesize these precious compounds in flow reactors where smaller amounts of material are made at any single point in time, but continuously over longer periods of time and/or in parallel. This dramatically reduces capital investment, while making processes more manageable, safer, and eliminating costly batch failures. COVID-19 turned the spotlight on worker safety and dramatically altered the way that chemical companies operate by forcing them into shiftwork and other strategies to lower the density of workers on site. Flow chemistry technology, coupled with artificial intelligence (AI) and internet of things (IoT) will enable reactions to be set up, monitored, and tweaked remotely using robotically-fed custom-designed flow reactors being developed by the Team. These results will shared widely across Canadian industry and nuclear-medicine departments in hospitals through the involvement of Worker Safety and Prevention Services (WSPS), which will dramatically improve worker safety and would have the additional benefit of offering primary care-caregivers of children, the elderly and the seriously ill an opportunity to work in these rewarding areas by being able to conduct their work remotely.

当前的COVID-19大流行暴露了加拿大无法有效地向其人口提供医疗应用所需的基本化合物。加拿大没有能力制备SARS-CoV-2疫苗和抗菌药物来治疗由此产生的肺部双重感染，这使得所有加拿大人都很脆弱，我们的经济也萎靡不振。据加拿大药品短缺组织称，加拿大有15种基本药物严重短缺或停止供应;这对一个八国集团国家来说是不可接受的，并威胁到我们的安全。药物分子的传统合成使用大规模的技术，采用大型批量反应器，需要数千万至数亿美元的资本投资。此外，关键药物的高级合成批次的失败可能导致数十万至数百万美元的运营损失。鉴于加拿大市场相对较小，加拿大企业很难建立承担此类风险的理由。另一种策略是在流动反应器中合成这些珍贵的化合物，其中在任何单个时间点制备较少量的材料，但在较长的时间段内连续地和/或并行地制备。这大大减少了资本投资，同时使流程更易于管理，更安全，并消除了代价高昂的批次故障。COVID-19将人们的注意力转向工人安全，并通过迫使化学公司轮班和其他策略来降低现场工人的密度，从而极大地改变了化学公司的运营方式。流动化学技术与人工智能（AI）和物联网（IoT）相结合，将使反应能够使用该团队正在开发的机器人进料定制设计的流动反应器进行远程设置、监控和调整。通过工人安全和预防服务的参与，这些成果将在加拿大工业部门和医院的核医学部门广泛分享，这将大大改善工人的安全，并将带来额外的好处，为儿童、老年人和重病患者的初级护理人员提供机会，使他们能够远程开展工作，从而在这些有益的领域工作。