(New Scientist) – A widely used anti-clotting drug called heparin is currently obtained from the intestines of a trillion pigs a year, which means there is a risk of accidental or deliberate contamination, as well as infections. Now, a way to make it synthetically could eliminate most of these risks.

“We think it could be sold within the next four to five years, maybe even less,” says Jonathan Dordick at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, whose team has developed a process for producing heparin from scratch. (Read More)