Two tissue chip investigations funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are among the payloads launching on SpaceX’s 27th Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) mission to the International Space Station (ISS). These projects, sponsored by the ISS National Laboratory, will study microgravity’s effects on engineered heart muscle tissue, and results could lead to new treatments for heart disease.
This mission also includes life sciences projects from several commercial entities: a biotechnology startup advancing its desktop drug manufacturing system, a large pharmaceutical company studying protein crystallization to improve therapeutic production processes, and a Commercial Service Provider testing a bioprinter that can print human tissues in the absence of gravity.
All of these ISS National Lab-sponsored projects aim to further research and development that brings value to humanity, validates new technologies and space-based facilities, and enables a sustainable economy in low Earth orbit.
Here is a quick look at some of the ISS National Lab-sponsored life science payloads on this mission:
- Research teams from Johns Hopkins University and Stanford University are using tissue chips in space to improve understanding of heart disease and develop new drugs to treat heart conditions on Earth. These projects were funded through the Tissue Chips in Space initiative, a multiyear collaboration between the ISS National Lab and NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.
- Tissue chips are systems containing human cells grown on artificial scaffolding to represent functional units of an organ. Muscles, including the heart, can weaken in microgravity, so heart muscle tissue chips in space could be used to model heart disease and screen potential new drugs. These projects build on knowledge both teams gained from previous tissue chip investigations on the space station.
- Researchers from pharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb will use the microgravity environment of the ISS to study the crystallization of biotherapeutic compounds. In space, some protein crystals grow larger and more well-ordered than on Earth, and the research team aims to identify the physical conditions that result in high-quality crystals.
SOURCE: PR Newswire