Good Health and Well-being for Everyone
“Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”
It is a human right to enjoy timely and appropriate healthcare and other health-releated determinants such as access to safe water and sanitation that ensure well-being. The ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ by the United Nations account for this and provide an opportunity to ensure that everyone has access to high health standards.
The corresponding efforts and objectives are compiled in the Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG 3) which focuses on reducing needless suffering caused by preventable diseases and premature death. Priority is given to areas with the highest burden of disease and to neglected populations and regions. As part of SDG 3, the UN calls for greater investments in research and development, healthcare financing, as well as health risk reduction and management.
The Goal and Its Importance
Under SDG 3, all major health priorities are addressed, including reproductive, maternal, and child health; communicable, noncommunicable, and environmental diseases; universal health coverage; and access for all to safe, effective, high-quality, and affordable medicines and vaccines. Covering all these health aspects ensures a better society. This is because healthy populations are more productive, which contributes to prosperity, wealth, and economic progress. Thus, good health is essential to all other aspects of life.
Due to its fundamental and wide ranging nature, SDG 3 requires a whole array of measures; the most important ones include:
- make investment in healthcare a priority to ensure a positive long-term impact
- account for social and economic factors that affect access, quality or required type of healthcare; these factors may include education, income, social and cultural background, gender, occupation, or living situation
- ensure access to quality healthcare services of all sorts for all
- ensure availability and affordability of effective and high-quality medicines for all
However, not only government bodies need to take action, also researchers and engineers from NGOs or private enterprises can have a huge impact on many of the key necessities for global health. Find inspirational examples below.
Medicines for All Institute
Based in Richmond, Virginia, the Medicines for All Institute (M4ALL) is dedicated to reduce production costs of high-quality medications so that they become more broadly available. The M4ALL platform enables the manufacturing of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and enhances the resilience of the supply chain for medicines around the world. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded M4ALL in 2017.
The unique approach of M4ALL combines novel chemistry with the fundamental elements of process intensification. These elements include:
- an integrated approach to develop advanced starting materials based on commodity chemicals,
- using minimum unit operations with common solvents,
- limiting intermediate isolations to combine high-yielding reactions, and
- evaluation of alternative manufacturing platforms.
In 2022, M4ALL published their research 'Molnupiravir: Enzyme Recycling Information for M4ALL's Two-Step Enzymatic Process'. This work disclosed a low-cost, two-step process for the antiviral pro-drug Molnupiravir used to treat COVID-19. In this project, M4ALL aimed to produce the target compound from cytidine, to reduce costs, and to cut waste, all with the use of our Rotating Bed Reactor (RBR) technology.
The RBR is an proprietary technology designed and distributed by us, SpinChem AB. It was develop to mitigate common issues in classical reactors and allows stirring rates of up to 1000 rpm, cutting mass transfer limitations whilst simultaneously minimizing backpressure issues and maintaining structural integrity of heterogeneous agents such as adsorbents or catalysts.
Before the RBR was implemented in the investigated synthesis, total raw material costs for the process were estimated to be $260/kg. By leveraging the RBR, total raw material cost were expected to be reduced to $160/kg, assuming three reuses of the enzyme. This corresponds to cost reductions of 38%. Besides the cuts in production costs also waste generation was substantially lowered, enabling both more affordable and more sustainable medicine for all.
Valuable Extracts from Nature
Olive oil is not only a widely beloved staple nowadays, it’s appreciation can be traced back to antiquity. It is packed with desirable compounds bringing along anti-inflammatory and antibacterial characteristics as well as cardiovascular benefits, just to name a few.
As the production of olive oil is a huge business and a major economic driver in many regions or even nations, its shear scale comes with questions regarding the valorization of common by-products such as olive leaves.
Research efforts by A. V. Chatzikonstantinou et al. led to the development of a chemo-enzymatic process that yields hydroxytyrosol-rich extracts. Over 20 phenolic compounds were identified in the product mix. For this process, immobilized enzymes were employed in both stirred tank reactors (STR) and rotating bed reactors (RBR).
Due to mechanical damage of the heterogeneous catalyst in the STR, the RBR provided a superior reactor system with better reaction rate, turnover number (TON), and total turnover number (TTN). Also, the RBR simplified the reuse of the immobilized enzyme.
Figure. (a) chemo-enzymatic modification of aqueous olive leaf extract in a 300 mL rotating bed reactor and (b) in a 2 L stirred-tank reactor; reaction catalyzed by bgl-CMB.
This illustrates how innovative technologies and creative approaches to unlock hidden values combined with scientific excellence promote sustainable development as a whole and contribute to good health and well being in particular.
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