Andrew Hessel

Andrew Hessel thinks cancer can be beaten if we can only make smarter medicines faster and cheaper. His solution: allow any maker to become a drug maker. He's out to completely change the way cancer drugs are made. For one thing, he wants to see them designed using computer software and manufactured in chip-sized factories for just one person at a time. For another, he wants these custom one-off medicines to be free of charge. Working with design software leader Autodesk and their new Bio/Nano Programmable Matter group, he's exploring how to build software tools, printers, and protocols that could allow almost anyone to create their very own drug development pipelines.