Washington, Aug 4 - Flasks, beakers and hot plates may soon be a thing of the past -- thanks to a thumbnail sized micro chip marvel which, when plugged into a computer, can instantly run thousands of chemical reactions.

The technology developed by University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers, could accelerate the identification of potential drug candidates for treating diseases like cancer.

While traditionally only a few chemical reactions could be produced on a chip, the research team pioneered a way to instigate multiple reactions, thus offering a new method to quickly screen which drug molecules may work most effectively with a targeted protein enzyme.

A thousand cycles of complex processes, including controlled sampling and mixing of a library of reagents and sequential micro channel rinsing, all took place on the micro chip device and were completed in just a few hours.

'The precious enzyme molecules required for a single reaction in a traditional lab now can be split into hundreds of duplicates for performing hundreds of reactions in parallel, thus revolutionizing the laboratory process, ' said study co-author Hsian-Rong Tseng.