How did Moore's Law and the miniaturization of transistors affect
process chemical suppliers?  The trend was higher purity chemicals and
trying to reduce consumption; but did the consumption of chemicals
reduce on an order of magnitude?  How much did the chemical purities
increase?  Will we see the same thing in the pharmaceutical arena with
the advances of Microarrays and Ultra High Throughput Screening?

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 13 Jan 2004 12:01 PST

Hello blucken-ga,

You certainly do ask intriguing questions!

I interpret your question to be referring to quantities and purities
of drugs, rather than to the chemicals used -- solvents, catalysts,
raw materials, etc -- in the manufacutre of drugs.  Is that a correct
assumption?

To my mind, the biggest factors looming on the horizon than can reduce
quantities of drugs needed are (1) targeted delivery, whereby the drug
goes only to the site where it is needed, rather than dosing the
entire body just to reach, e.g., a wound or a kidney, and (2)
Pharmacogenetics, whereby drugs can be custom-tailored to an
individual patient's genotype, reducing the amounts of active
ingredients needed to be effective.

Are these the type of developments you are inquiring about?  If so,
what sorts of information are you looking for?

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Clarification of Question by blucken-ga on 13 Jan 2004 13:02 PST

I am actually referring to quantities and purities of the CHEMICALS
used -- namely solvents, reagents, etc -- used to manufacture the
oligonucleotides, proteins, etc. in the drug discovery piece as well
as the drug manufacturing process.

So if you can uncover any information about the usage of high purity
process chemicals in the semiconductor industry as the minaturization
has taken place as a benchmark for the pharmaceutical industry -- that
would be great.  And if you can find any preliminary info on the
miniturization process taking place in the pharmaceutical arena, that
would also be helpful.

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 14 Jan 2004 08:08 PST

Hello again,

Well...I sure was off-base with my initial interpretation.  Thanks for
the clarification.

I'm still not totally sure what you're after, however.

There's no indication that I've ever seen that the manufacture of
electronic equipment is any less chemical-intensive now than in the
past, Moore's Law notwithstanding.

There's no doubt that on a per-transistor basis, chemical use has
declined enormously.  But as firms learn to make transistors smaller
and smaller, they make more and more of them.  The net effect seems to
be that overall chemical usage quantity hasn't changed all that much,
though there is certainly a shift in types of chemicals used, and in
purity demands, especially for etchants.

Similarly in pharmaceuticals, there's certainly a shift in
technologies, but no indiciation that I've ever seen that overall
quantities of chemical use in the manufacturing processes is declining
(laboratory use is another matter, as microassays DO allow much
smaller quanitites of chemicals to be used in the exploratory phase of
a drug's development).

Assume for the moment that my overall impression is correct -- that
gross quantities of chemicals used in electronics and in
pharmacuetical manufacturing have not declined by any great amount in
recent years.  Are you looking for documentation of this?  Do you want
an answer that just focuses on chemical purity demands, independent of
quantities?  Or you want some other sort of information?

I look forward to learning more about your interests in this topic.

pafalafa-ga

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Clarification of Question by blucken-ga on 14 Jan 2004 12:10 PST

Let's focus on Drug Discovery and Development.  Let's assume that
gross quantities of chemicals has decreased (laboratory use is another
matter, as microassays DO allow much smaller quanitites of chemicals
to be used in the exploratory phase of a drug's development).  We have
seen volumes go from ml to micro-liter to nano-liter to sub
nano-liter.  What has this done to purity level requirements for
solvents/reagents?  Increase dramatically?  Stay the same?  Why?  So
documentation to answer this question would be perfect.

The application of Moore law to pharma (drug discovery),
     drawing an analogy between ICs and microarrays  is valid.  
    In both cases, we are descending the scale, from macroscopic, 
     to nanotechnology, in both cases the ultimate limit on validity
     of Moore law is a single molecule.    In both cases, technology in
     handling a single molecule is being developed and used.
   Http:// www.ehcca.com/presentations/ehc-info/Peck.pdf
    
   Six years from now, 7 of the top 20 pharma companies will no longer be around"
   http://www.fwpharma.com/insightspr99/pharma2005.htm
     

    Pharma  today as  IT  was in 60ties -  Moore law
    http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/21biotechweb.htm  
      
 Quite a lot was published about that
      Cost of genetic tech is falling  
        Wasyl Malyj, a molecular biologist at the University of
California, Davis, maintains that
      Moore's Law  eventually will apply to genetic testing. 
         http://www.post-gazette.com/healthscience/20000709testcost.asp  
         
          SCPD ProEd: Stanford Engineering and Science Institute
 ... Applications of DNA microarrays in genomics including gene
expression analysis ... integrated
 circuits keeps scaling down, following Moore's Law and the scaling ... 
scpd.stanford.edu/scpd/courses/ proed/seasi/pgmOverview.htm
               

 ... Eventually, Motorola plans to integrate microarrays,
microfluidics and electronic
 chips ... and describes his job now as "applying Moore's Law and
microfluidics to ...
www.eetimes.com/special/special_issues/ millennium/milestones/heller.html     

  Time and space scales  are correlated:  smaller means also faster:
  resolution of about 100 milliseconds and a spatial  ....
 Beyond diagnosis and testing, drug target identification is an
important application
         http://www.nap.edu/openbook/0309083362/html/9-32.htm

  So, back to your question: 
 As you are getting closer and closer to stuying a 
 single molecule, and it's interaction with cell, you are getting
closer to ultra-pure compunds.

   SEARCH TERMS   microarrays Moore Law
                 pharma, purity, Moore Law

If you are happy with the answer, please do rate it . It helps me 
     to improve my skills if I know how well,or how badly, I did answer.
     If you are not happy, please do ask for clarification.

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Clarification of Answer by hedgie-ga on 18 Jan 2004 00:46 PST

Here are some more substantial reports:

 sensors:
 ...   These techniques allow the tailoring of materials and devices
at the nanostructure level,1 i.e., accurate growth
and placement of clusters of a few or a few tens of atoms down to the
positioning of single atoms. They will provide
completely new sensor materials and the quantum wires, dots, and
single-electron transistor devices that are likely to
be exploited to continue the long-term growth trends in solid-state
electronics into the future for decades to come. It
seems clear that sensors and sensor systems of all kinds will benefit
from these capabilities, getting continuously
smaller and cheaper and more capable with time. The implementation of
microscale or perhaps even nanoscale
self-contained entities with integrated sensors, computers, and
actuators will certainly become possible over the next
several decades, and such devices will probably represent a mature,
widespread technology by 2035.
 http://www.nap.edu/html/tech_21st/t4.htm

 ultrapure    gas and fluid delivery systems    using
 microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology 
   1990        612 mm  
   2000        156 mm

     Figure 8: MEMS-based MFC performance repeatability versus competing MFCs.
http://www.micromagazine.com/archive/98/07/dehan.html    

  Nanobio 2002 Conference
 ... a bottoms-up approach to nanotechnology will be ...
 inevitable limits of the Moore's law
Biotech meets Nanotech?  
 http://www.bccresearch.com/editors/nanobiotech2002.htm 


   quantum limit for NEMS (sub-micron MEMS)
Feynmanesque dream -- millions of atoms,
 each placed with atomic precision
htp://arxiv.org/pdf/cond-mat/0008187


 . Nanotechnology, Moore's Law. ... 
www.gyre.org/news/related/Moore's+Law

   Dickerson's law

Twenty-four years ago, Richard Dickerson came up with a mathematical
formula that optimistically predicted an
accelerating pace of discovery in the burgeoning field of protein
structure determination with X-ray crystallography
(see story, page 8). Dickerson, then a professor of physical chemistry
at Caltech, noted that the number of protein
crystal structures had risen from one solved by the end of 1961 to 23
solved by the end of 1977. His formula predicted
that by March 2001, scientists would have solved the 3-D structures of
a grand total of more than 12,000 proteins. He
was very close. 
http://www.npaci.edu/envision/v18.1/moore.html


So, in summary,  Moore law of microelectronics was just the first manifestation
of a deeper scaling law on nanotechnology which applies to MEMS, NEMS,.., 
 
Todays microarrays, are 'laboratory on the  chip',  

Animal cell is more a complex system. It is a  chemical processing plant 
(does not even need a chip) able to 
produce exactly designed molecules (proteins) from molecularly encoded designs
 (DNA). Not only chemical structure but 
also secondary and tertiary structure important and controlled (see prions)   

Eventually, technology will catch up with nature in
the new convergence: Infotech, biotech and nanotech 

    http://www.dfj.com/files/infotech_article.html       

 Application of the scaling laws to nanotech: 
--------------------------------------------------------  

     http://www.foresight.org/Nanosystems/ch2/chapter2_2.html  

 
  Ultimate limit on progress  in this direction  
---------------------------------------------------------
 (direction meaning here to smaller and smaller scale)
 is in     

1) laws of Quantum Mechanics (QM)
2) laws of social organization     (SO)

re 1) QM
www.iupac.org/publications/pac/2000/ 7201/7201pdf/1_alivisatos.pdf     

re  2)  SO

 Scaling Laws and Social Organization 
http://www.santafe.edu/files/gems/behavioralsciences/west.pdf   

  This area of research is in the beginnings:

 It was conjectured that number of 
 professionals grows as exp {  alfa * (Y0 -Y) }  

where the growth  exponent alfa and   year of origin is  alfa*y0 
differ for different profession.   In US, the most advanced
country, we can already notice that alfa is larger
for IP lawyers then for scientists and engineers.  

    USA
           The number of lawyers in the United States exceeded 1
million for the first time in 2003
             http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Dec/12282003/business/123654.asp      

    EUROPE   is catching up
                www.ccbe.org/doc/stat_avocats.pdf

   CHINA is not left  behind:

   BY the year 2003 the city will have 8,000 more lawyers and 10 new
law offices will be set up this year, to
meet the challenges that entry to the World Trade Organization (WTO) wil
     
 The number of lawyers in China
 has jumped to the present 110,000 from a mere 200 two decades ... 
www.china.org.cn/english/Life/36430.htm  
                                                                        
So, in conclusion:
     As count of IP litigations growth with square of IP lawyers, we can 
    expect that we will reach dynamic equilibrium due to SO  
   constraints before we reach the Quantum Limit.

hedgie

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Request for Answer Clarification by blucken-ga on 19 Jan 2004 08:55 PST

I'm just getting to this answer... i will go through your information
and rate your answer.  Sorry, i have been tied up and have not went
through this as of yet.

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Clarification of Answer by hedgie-ga on 20 Jan 2004 09:06 PST

That's OK  blucken
 
I added the second installment without waiting
for reaction to the first because I realised there is a
more to this question then I saw at first.

This happend after I posted the answer.
That new angle is the connection of IT and pharma through nanotechnology.
 Second search confirmed this deeper connection and possible effect of
general scaling laws. I thought it may be interesting, so I added that.

 There is no rush.
We will be here.

hedgie