Living in space takes a huge toll on the human body, and providing medical care to astronauts -- and ultimately, regular people traveling to space -- can be complicated due to material and space constraints. However, research to support human life in space is growing. An interesting project funded by the UK Space Agency supports manufacturing and research pharmaceutical production in space, an environment that in many ways is more suitable for such activities than Earth.
The UK Space Agency and Biolog Technologies are collaborating to develop advanced biotechnologies for space manufacturing, including vaccines and gene therapies. Funding from the UK Space Agency will support research by a biotechnology company (BiologIC) to develop and manufacture vaccines and gene therapies faster than most traditional methods and make these processes suitable for space.
The Cambridgeshire-based company has developed a precision bioprocessing platform for low Earth orbit and microgravity operations in space environments that is capable of withstanding the pressure and heat of space travel and operating in microgravity environments where liquids float.
The tests, which will be conducted inside the ISS, will also explore the potential of biomanufacturing systems to produce food and raw materials from basic biological ingredients, which is critical in the limited space of the ISS. They will also use the microgravity environment to study age-related diseases and potentially grow human organs for transplantation, which is more feasible in space than on Earth.
The potential for making drugs in space is particularly tantalizing, as experiments conducted over the years aboard the International Space Station and other spacecraft have shown that crystal growth in microgravity is superior to methods on Earth. This is because microgravity conditions cause many of the processes used to make complex crystalline molecules, including proteins and antibodies used in many drugs, to behave differently than they do on Earth.
For example, Professor Anne Wilson, a researcher at Butler University in Indianapolis, reports that crystals grown in space are larger and more uniform, with an 80% or higher chance of being better than similar crystals grown on Earth. She added that in space, liquid solutions do not separate due to density, nor do solids naturally fall or rise in them.
The ultimate goal of the UK Space Agency-Bioinformation Center partnership is to develop technologies that can support sustainable human habitation in space, and space-based experiments are also critical in this regard. Astronauts experience significant physiological changes in microgravity, including bone and muscle loss, vision problems, and altered immune function—changes that can only be accurately studied and addressed through space-based research, because the increased radiation in space cannot be fully simulated on Earth.