Early applications accelerate drug design and monitoring of magnetic data-storage materials.
The concept had been demonstrated in prototype lenses but the technology had to be reliable, cost effective, and safe to be commercially viable. The new optics, which the company says can identify and determine the structure of proteins four to 10 times faster than conventional methods, already are being used to analyze large, near-perfect crystals grown in the weightless environment of space to support new drug design. The NASA work helped characterize an antibody to a rare virus afflicting infants, an important step toward a treatment, and led to the formation of a new company, New Century Pharmaceuticals in Alabama.