About the Pharmacotherapeutics Laboratory

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Medications are an integral part of space flight, used to treat space motion sickness, headache, sleeplessness, backache, and nasal congestion among many other acute and chronic ailments in space. With extended-duration space habitation, and expedition to Moon and Mars, pharmaceuticals will be used for the treatment of illness and infections in addition to their use in tandem with other countermeasures to augment cardiovascular conditioning, musculoskeletal integrity, and immune response. The goal of the Pharmacotherapeutics Laboratory is to mitigate pharmacotherapeutic risk by identifying and providing safe and effective diagnostics tools, pharmaceutical preparations, therapeutic procedures and intervention strategies to enable successful space medical operations.

The Pharmacology Laboratory, in close collaboration with the Space and Clinical Operations Division, supports medical requirements for the International Space Station, and space exploration programs. Activities include clinical pharmacy services, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics research, therapeutic drug monitoring, specialized therapeutic monitoring for spaceflight-related pathophysiology, novel dosage form development, and pharmaceutical stability assessment.

The Laboratory capabilities include but not limited to the following activities:

• FDA sponsored Phase I - III Clinical trials implementation
• Clinical pharmacotherapeutics research
• International drug equivalency database construction and maintenance for space program
• Medications database maintenance for Shuttle, International Space Station and future expeditions to Moon and Mars
• Novel drug delivery and monitoring methods and technologies
• Drug stability and shelf-life assessment and reference database installation for space medicine
• Development and validation of diagnostic and intervention strategies and products

Current research projects in progress include:

• Bioavailability and performance effects of scopolamine dosage forms in human subjects
• Pharmacodynamics of intranasal scopolamine
• Development of microencapsulated promethazine dosage forms
• Evaluation of gastrointestinal function monitoring and enhancement strategies
• Bioavailability and pharmacodynamics of promethazine dosage forms
• Stability of pharmaceuticals in space and in simulated space flight environment
• Evaluation of radiation protectants for pharmaceutical preparations

Contacts:

• Lakshmi Putcha, PhD
• Camille Crady