If you’re fascinated by the idea of humans traveling through space and curious about how that all works, you’ve come to the right place.
“Houston We Have a Podcast” is the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center from Houston, Texas, home for NASA’s astronauts and Mission Control Center. Listen to the brightest minds of America’s space agency – astronauts, engineers, scientists and program leaders – discuss exciting topics in engineering, science and technology, sharing their personal stories and expertise on every aspect of human spaceflight. Learn more about how the work being done will help send humans forward to the Moon and on to Mars in the Artemis program.
On Episode 176, Dr. Siobhan Malany, president of Micro-gRx and associate professor at the University of Florida College of Pharmacy, brings her expertise to discuss tissue chips containing human muscle cells that recently made their way to the International Space Station for investigation. This episode was recorded on December 7, 2020.
Transcript
Gary Jordan (Host): Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, Episode 176, “Muscles on Chips in Space.” I’m Gary Jordan, and I’ll be your host today. On this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, astronauts all to let you know what’s going on in the world of human spaceflight. Now, longtime listeners may remember when we chatted with Dr. Lucie Low from the National Institute of Health about organs on chips in space. We talked about this technology that’s about the size of a thumb drive that mimics the structure and function of human tissues and organs. That was Episode 70, for those that want to check it out which, now that I think about it, was more than 100 episodes ago. Wow. Time flies. Well, this kind of technology has brought a number of investigations to space since then. Just recently, the SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket delivered the Dragon cargo vehicle on the CRS-21 mission to the International Space Station, bringing up a ton of science with it, literally, like a ton, 2000 lbs of science, actually a bit more. Now, part of that mass was dedicated to tissue chips for an investigation called, or at least informally, human muscle on a chip. So, on today’s podcast, we’re going to talk about this investigation, the tissue chip technology and the story of how this investigation went from paper to low-Earth orbit. Our guest today is Dr. Siobhan Malany, president of Micro-gRx and associate professor at the University of Florida College of Pharmacy. So, here we go. Muscles on Chips in Space with Dr. Siobhan Malany. Enjoy.
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Host: Dr. Siobhan Malany, thank you so much for coming on Houston We Have a Podcast today.
Siobhan Malany: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Host: Hey, we’re recording this on December 7, 2020. Just a few hours ago, we saw the SpaceX cargo Dragon on CRS-21 dock to the International Space Station. What we’re going to be talking about today is some of the science that is on that particular mission. I’m sure you were watching launch. I don’t know if you watched docking. But how does it feel knowing your science is now on the International Space Station?
Siobhan Malany: It’s a relief because it’s been a lot of work. And it’s good to get it off the ground and see what we can get out of this project.
Host: Well, I’m going to make a note to make sure that we talk about all the work that it’s taken to get this investigation ready for this very moment for docking to the International Space Station. And I’m sure that it’s going to be a whole other milestone when they actually start conducting the investigation and, I guess even better when, when you start seeing some of the data come in. Before we get into this investigation in particular, I want to understand a little more about you. You’re the president of Micro-gRx, you’re an associate professor at the University of Florida College of Pharmacy and collaborate with the biomedical engineering department. Your background is in what I remember a lot of my engineering friends and science friends, your background is in a PhD of organic — organic chemistry and enzymology. I know a lot of my engineering and science friends, this was their least favorite subject. I want to know why did you end up going into this very difficult field, Siobhan, organic chemistry and enzymology and then some more of your background.
Siobhan Malany: Yeah. I really work as a biologist, but I did start in chemistry. You know, I just was inspired about how things worked and how they come together and make, you know, new molecules. And then I got interested in drugs and how you make drugs with new medications and went into the biotechnology industry in San Diego before going from that into an academic [career] in one sense, but then creating Micro-gRx more or less when I moved to Florida and became close to the Kennedy Space Center and just really got curious about what things happening back in 2011, 2012 at the end of the shuttle period and what was coming up. And it just was happenstance that I really got into space medicine. So, you know, very diverse in taking this path. But my research is really chemistry and biology, so, I combined both of them in my research.
Host: So, what about your research? What are the types of things that you are investigated — investigating and interested in?
Siobhan Malany: Yes, and it does stem from my biotechnology background here at University of Florida. But, you know, it’s a — disease in dish modeling, if you will, so looking at human cells, human tissue in a dish that mimics disease so you can test potential drug candidates for that, you know, human response, human toxicity. And this is — that is more predictable. So, maybe we can rely a little less on animal studies or at least be predictable of human response. And so, I’ve brought some of that training from biotechnology and drug discovery environment into academia. And so, we work with human cells and human tissues to — and part of my lab is medicinal chemistry. So, we synthesize compounds. We can test them in different assays, particularly looking at cardiovascular disease, liver, liver disease as well as muscle atrophy. So those are some of the areas that I study. And we’re really trying to use these advanced systems. And that’s sort of where it stems to use microgravity as one of those platforms to study diseases.
Host: And that’s — that was actually going to be my next question, Siobhan, is how these two worlds sort of merged. You mentioned having Kennedy Space Center kind of in your backyard, you know, being able to see those launches. Pretty spectacular place to live. But how this — some of your research ended up merging? Or maybe where that curiosity for what happens in microgravity, where those two worlds started colliding?
Siobhan Malany: Yeah. It’s really interesting because it’s just — it’s pure happenstance of coming to Florida and having a background in chemistry and pharmacology, being in the world of drug discovery. And, you know, it really was going to the Endeavor launch in 2011 and meeting some folks that were doing experiments on the space station and then networking with folks at Space Florida. The CASIS, Center For Advancement of Science in Space was really just organizing, and so I was meeting some of those folks as well and starting to really think about, well, what does this mean in terms of accessibility to the space station? In one sense, you know, I can — back to this disease in a dish, you can take healthy cells or, you know, a patient’s cells that are in a disease state, or you can add something that might make them diabetic or something in the dish. Well, what if you used the microgravity as that, I guess, platform that could basically induce the kind of a disease? I mean, if you look at astronauts — and lucky for them, their — the effects on their tissue are reversible when they come back to ground state. But there’s a lot of effects on muscle and bone in microgravity, and they really do happen relatively quickly. And so, what does that mean in terms of utilizing that environment, that extreme environment of radiation and low gravity where these processes of might happen quickly on the tissues? And can you understand diseases and then study potential new medicines that can help alleviate some of our major ailments that we have on Earth?
Host: So, I actually want to get into your — this company, Micro-gRx and some of the formation there. But I am curious, before I get into that, were you involved in any kind of spaceflight research, space medicine, anything before Micro-gRx that kind of sparked the idea for this company? What was the path there to eventually get to Micro-gRx?
Siobhan Malany: Yeah. Again, it’s back to the curiosity and networking. So, Micro-gRx was a logo, and it was just — it applied to a competition that was sponsored by Space Florida and NanoRacks. Just, it was a competition to send something in a 10-by-10-centimeter box to space station. And so, I — thinking about my background in drug discovery, I’m like, well, you know, can we do some kind of drug discovery in space? So, I came up with the Micro-gRx where Micro-g’s the microgravity and Rx is the pharmaceutics. And it was a logo. And then when I had received some seed funding from Space Florida, Micro-gRx became the company. And so, it’s really stemmed out of that pure investigation and just being exposed to these new ideas and then developing ideas of, OK, what would — what makes sense to do on a space station, and how would you do that? And taking some of the basic things that we do here on Earth in — for example, the competition was to access a plate reader, which is basically a very common piece of — instrument that drug discovery, pharmaceutical companies use. So, there was a plate reader on space station, and so that was the competition. I said, well, let’s go look at how proteins interact that give off light and just use and calibrate this plate reader. And that was a fairly straightforward experiment that fit into this 10-centimeter by 10-centimeter box, and that’s what we sent up. So — and then, from there, there was been some real funding that’s come out to do research on space station. And so, that’s where I thought, I’m a cell biologist. So, what can we do in terms of cells, and I really got into working with AdventHealth and using muscle from — they had stores of cells from muscle biopsies from folks that are, you know, younger in age and older in age. And so, we developed this idea to look at muscle wasting in a cell-based platform and study that on the space station. So, that’s where the ideas really kind of blossomed, and Micro-gRx came to be and started to get some real funding going on these ideas. And it’s really — this is back, you know, 2015. And just since that time, the number of research institutions that are accessing the space station is just incredible, the number of different things that are being studied. And, again, it’s just accessibility and better funding. So, it’s exciting time, I think, in just this past five years or so.
Host: And that’s why I’m excited to have you on today Siobhan, to kind of explore this landscape of just how robust, I guess, this research in microgravity is becoming, how many players there really are and then some of the interesting science that you could be a part of. So Micro-gRx, you talked about kind of expanding from this plate reader and the competition to what it is today. Now, some of the things that we’re going to be talking about today is related to technology, not just some of these more biological aspects to the research. But there’s a technological component here. So, some of the things that Micro-gRx has and some of the — I don’t know if you want to call them facilities or pieces of technology, whatever you want to call them, what we’re going to be talking about today, I think, is tissue chips. So, can you sort of describe tissue chips, what those are.
Siobhan Malany: Yeah. Tissue chips are really — they’re a functional unit. And they’re just the size of a, I guess, a thumb drive or, you know, maybe not — a credit card is actually too big so more like a thumb drive size. But they’re these functional units that contain human cells or human tissue and maybe multiple cell types that would make up an organ like a heart or like a lung or something. And they — the chip technology is just the containment so you can deliver fluids or air or electrical pulse or whatever it is that you’re wanting to test in your organ. But there — they are these human functional organs that are used to be more predictive of human response when it comes to drug testing or drug toxicity. And, you know, just so many drugs fail because of a lack of human efficacy or toxicity. And so, the — before they get to clinical trials or into animal studies. And so, these tissue chip technology is really filling that gap from the early drug discovery to the clinic and being a predictive human functional response. And so that’s — that’s the tissue chip technology. The benefit and the thought of using that on the space station is that, by nature, they are — they can be autonomous. They are contained, and so they have the kind of technology that would go on space station. Since you have to do things remotely, they have to be programmed and autonomous. And so, the tissue chips have now, been a natural technology that can transfer to the space station. But certainly, by doing that, it’s advanced the technology, the miniaturization by sending these types of tissue chips to the space station.
Host: So, when it comes to Micro-gRx, now, we’re going to be talking about some of the folks that you brought together for this particular investigation. But is it Micro-gRx that is manufacturing these, that is kind of putting the puzzle together? What are you doing with tissue chips exactly?
Siobhan Malany: Yeah. It takes a lot for this — the experiments going to the space station does take — is very much team-team based science because we rely a lot on the implementation partners. And so, those that — our implementation partner is Space Tango. They’re out of Lexington, Kentucky. They are the — not only the hosting platform on the vehicle and on the space station, but they have also developed a lot of the technology in terms of the pumps that can deliver fluids. And they have a camera system. And they’ve made the box that everything goes into. This live laboratory goes into this shoe box. And so, Space Tango developed that. So, what Micro-gRx has done is more the basic tissue chip function that the biology goes into, and so we’re studying the muscle wasting. So, we’ve developed these muscle tissue chips, and so Micro-gRx has developed the — designed the chip to fit on a Space Tango platform in the box and also hold the biology. So, everything comes together, but it takes engineers and hardware specialist and implementation folks and biologists to get it all together.
Host: Yeah. There’s a few more players in this story. Right? I think University of Florida is one. I think — I think there might be some others. Yeah. It’s a — it’s a larger team than one would expect, right? It’s not just one team. It is a very collaborative effort.
Siobhan Malany: No. And that’s where, you know, I’m being interdisciplinary, and understanding the technology and biology has been key. So, at the University of Florida, we’re doing the muscle biology, studying the muscle biology. And Micro-gRx is making the tissue chip, the actual chip. And the Space Tango is developing the actual payload box and the hosting platform on space station. So, it really takes all these integrate partners to make it all work.
Host: Alright. So, you talked about some of the science, and you’ve already alluded to it. You’re talking about muscles, and I think you said some age-related studies, I think is what you said, age-related decline. Let’s start investigating exactly what we’re putting onboard the International Space Station, or I guess at this point, what has just recently arrived. So, what is the science that’s inside this tissue chip technology in the box?
Siobhan Malany: Right. So, science, we talked about using microgravity as this platform to study what happens to tissues because, as we see in astronauts, there is a decline. And that seems to happen very, very rapidly. So, the idea is that — is that similar process to what happens when we age over time. So age-related muscle decline, which is called sarcopenia, is a pretty major health issue in the United States. It is more the extreme muscle — loss of muscle strength, which then contributes to fragility and injuries and loss of quality of life and, potentially, death. And so, it is a major decline after the age of 60 and 80. And so, this is quite a health burden, and there’s really nothing that is available to counter this more extreme muscle decline. So, the idea is to use microgravity and to see if this process happens faster on the — where there’s low gravity because it does appear this happens in astronauts. There have been other experiments that show that the cells respond, and the tissues do sense the low gravity and do change. And so, on a tissue level, you could get some information about maybe this disease process and get that information much faster than waiting for someone to age, for example. So, this experiment is sending — we’ve collaborated with AdventHealth. And so, they have collected muscle biopsies from both younger people and older individuals. And we’ve taken those cells and made them three-dimensional into these chips. They actually look like a little rubber band around some anchor points. Because muscle contracts and so, they’re only — you know, again, this thumb-drive size, these little muscle bundles. And they do contract. We’ve added electrodes to them to deliver a pulse so that they can — to monitor the contraction on orbit so we can have a functional response. And we also have a camera system in the box that we can just look at the health and record the contraction while they’re in orbit. And then we actually preserve these cells, and we bring them back to Earth and we can look at how their gene expression changes in these cells compared to the cells that we would have — we’d be testing on ground.
Host: That is absolutely fascinating. So, you’re literally — you’re literally sending electrodes through these little pieces of technology, and with a camera — I mean, can you actually see these little tissues contracting? Is that — are you able to watch that?
Siobhan Malany: That is going to be the great thing. That is exactly what I’m waiting for that downlink of muscle cells. If I don’t get anything else and we could just show that we can do this in the space station to have a real-time functional response measure contraction, is there a decline in the contraction, you know, which corresponds with muscle mass and strength and, you know, can we do these types of experiments? Because they can be applicable to, you know, neurons or heart cells. I mean, there’s applications to being able to deliver electrical pulses to cells in low gravity. So, that’s the big thing that I really hope we can get out. But, you know, we’ve got 16 chips in there. Some are being electrically stimulated, some are not. Trying to collect all the data that we can. We’re getting more miniaturized, being able to send more chips so that you have more sampling sizes and can do different readouts. But we’ll see. It’s never — it’s never perfect. You’re building the technology as you’re running the biology, so it’s really about trying to mitigate risk and trying to get the most information out of each flight. And the big plus is that we will be able to re-fly in two years, with the idea of making improvements, also testing drugs for muscle atrophy and building on what we learned from this trip.
Host: And having a larger sample size even, I guess, right?
Siobhan Malany: Right. And that’s — you know — and that’s — what’s great is the real benefit of the tissue chip is that it is this, you know, this human unit that you, instead of looking at the astronaut where there’s one astronaut, you know, we can have more and more of these tissue chips to sample and study different things. So, you can expand how many chips you have. They don’t take up much space. And, you know, they’re not animals. So, we don’t — so it’s a benefit to be able to continue to understand a disease state using these tissue chips, which has either been — and maybe we get astronauts on a chip and be able to look at how they might react to prolonged space travel. I mean, that’s the real idea, not just benefiting health on Earth but also looking at what the effects would be with prolonged space travel. So, you could send these experiments up for longer and longer times. This one’s just going to run for about two weeks, just, you know, again, a long enough time to get something but not too long that something might happen. So, we’re trying to mitigate the risk and get the most benefit out of it.
Host: Now, you’ve talked about comparing some of the data that you’re seeing from the microgravity environment. I think you mentioned partnering with AdventHealth. And they were — they were doing some studies ahead of time for maybe for some ground-based studies to compare them. Are these — are these with actual, you know, human subjects? Or are we — or are they also on tissue chips and then you just compare tissue chip to tissue chip? How does that work?
Siobhan Malany: No. They are — they are Floridians themselves going to space, at least. So, they were volunteers. So, we have about nine subjects of the younger age group, which is under 40 and the older age group over 60. And so, we’ve pulled the cells from nine subjects of taking biopsies from the leg and then taking those cells and creating the 3D muscle bundles in these chips. The nice thing about working with AdventHealth is that, when we can collect data, they do a lot of bedrest studies. Again, there’s, I think, you know, the idea there is a similarity between, you know, long term bedrest, bedrest from injury, spaceflight and aging. And so, if you can kind of start to understand, use space and understand in a short time these processes that might be similar in bedrest or in aging, then that’s where we want to get to and start collecting some data. And so, AdventHealth has a lot of — it’s the Translational Research Institute at AdventHealth that we’re working with. And so, they’ve got a lot of data already, really focusing on muscle diseases and muscle and diabetes and other areas. So, there’ll be a wealth of information to — once we can compare data from flight, our flight studies, ground studies and then some of the studies that they actually do.
Host: And so, a better understanding of just exactly what’s happening here, is that — is, I guess, the ultimate end goal here to better understand maybe improve medications, maybe even better understand what’s happening to the human body in space and then create some countermeasures from there? Are these all real, you know, applications of the possibilities from really, truly understanding some of these — some of these effects of sarcopenia?
Siobhan Malany: Yes. Exactly. Yeah. There’s different levels. The first idea is really using the space station to study diseases that impact us on Earth. And, you know, is there this idea that we can — that there’s an accelerated aging type of process in cells that we can model. Again, it’s going back to that disease-in-a-dish modeling, using the space station to sort of induce that disease state and can we do that and see that process faster on the space station. Certainly, that makes sense when you talk about aging, which happens over years and years, right? And so, is that process something we can look at and then test potential medicines to look for countermeasures, not just then for treating muscle diseases on Earth, but then they will be applicable to, you know, prolonged spaceflight and travel and even understanding a specific person, how their cells actually would respond. So, I think that — and this goes with across different organs, too. So that’s where the whole funding has come from, from the National Institutes of Health, funding different tissue chip models from kidney to lung to bone. There’s several different tissue chip projects that have been flying to the space station and will continue to fly over the next two to three years. So, it’s really an exciting environment that I hope we can really collect a lot of data from, from these tissue chip experiments.
Host: It is true, even on this podcast, we’ve been talking about tissue chips for quite a number of years already, which is actually funny because it was just a few years ago that we were talking about testing the technology as a whole and seeing if it was something that was — could be done in spaceflight and that was worth doing. And I think very quickly it’s proven to be a very effective method of testing some of these — some of these systems within the human body, some of these functions. It’s actually quite incredible. At the beginning, Siobhan, you mentioned, man, it’s been quite a journey to get this — to this point, right? Again, we’re recording this the day of CRS-21 docking with this very experiment onboard. Can we talk about just that journey for a minute, just what it’s taken to really get everyone together and say, “Hey, I have this idea for this experiment I want to do on the International Space Station. Let’s collaborate.”
Siobhan Malany: Yeah. Right. I had a flight in 2018 out of Wallops. And that was a much smaller experiment — two, it was more of a not 3D tissue, more of a lab on a chip but really working with this atomic laboratory and being able to just culture cells in a box; send it up there, keep them alive, you know, keep them fed and happy and maybe look at them under a microscope. So, that was the first experiment, 2018. And, you know, we had a lot of issues with just technology. You know, power draws and pumps and the technology itself is quite a feat. And so, you know, this, we’ve expanded on. We’ve worked the last two years on this particular experiment. And it really — it — I’ve learned a lot in from — I think you’ve probably talked more in terms of the overall program management. I’m really — I think you learn what people you really need at the table. And we’re all very different. I mean, we have aerospace engineering folks. And, you know, I’ve got a biologist on my team that’s come from Big Pharma. She’s doing the muscle biology. And then we have engineers and material scientists. And we may not speak each other’s language, so you really have to cover what is it that we don’t know that we’re missing, you know? When somebody designs the hardware, well, that might interfere with the biology. We’ve got to solve that issue. And so, that for me as the investigator, has been the challenge. And what I’ve really learned over the past several years is really hard to go through the checklists to make sure that we’re, again, developing the right technology; the biology is going to fit and it’s going to make sense and things aren’t going to leak or, you know, these things are — the pumps are going to operate. The, you know, air bubbles are a huge problem, right, keeping the air bubbles out. I mean, these might seem trivial, but they’re big issues that we are constantly working on. So we’ve gone through — and COVID’s made it tough because we’ve kind of had to be remote, sending hardware back and forth, running ground test after ground test to just, you know, study one — you know, the pumps first and the camera system and do these iterative testing. And it’s been a big process. And, you know, I’m sure we’ve got lots of things we need to still improve on. But it’s — like you said, it’s not just about the science. It’s about building the technology as well. And in the tissue chip world, the enabling technologies are also a really, really big point because they will — they are also important in terms of these — ability to do these — miniaturized autonomous laboratories. And then that’s also a big plus of what we’re getting out of our experiment.
Host: So, is — that’s really how it’s going to be run once it gets onboard the International Space Station, right? I guess it’s really — it’s really just plugged in. And you said the word autonomous. It’s — I mean, it’s really going to do a lot of this themselves. Is there really limited — limited crew interaction with this kind of thing?
Siobhan Malany: Right. And that’s also the benefit. There’s almost no crew intervention, other than taking that box off the Dragon and then plugging it into the space station. And then, at the end of our experiment, we need to put it in a cold storage. It’ll go to minus 30 Celsius after our experiment. And so, some of the — one of the astronauts has to move it over to the freezer, if you will. So that’s really it. And so, it is — there is part sending commands, so that’s where Space Tango is really advanced. Their technology is — it’s not just necessarily full pre-program loop. It’s some of it — they are able to send commands to say, you know, “turn on this pump or move the camera to this location.” So, some of it is programmed and some of it on command, we can say, “hey, you know, we need to capture this video or maybe we need to terminate experiment earlier than we thought.” So, these are things that we’re able to control. They can also downlink the either video or an image so that we can start to look at do the cells look healthy, are they contracting and these kinds of things, that it’s really exciting because that — at least a couple years ago, we weren’t — we were more like push the button. And here the program is going to send, you know, nutrients to the cells every eight hours or whatever the program is. Now it’s — there’s a little bit more capability to communicate with the box. So, it will consistently be delivering fluids to all 16 chips. It will take images of these chips. It’ll take video of them through the course of about 14 days and then add a fixative and then it’s thrown into the freezer.
Host: And I guess when it’s thrown into the freezer, it’s ultimately to keep it cold. There’s some power lockers on the cargo Dragon for when it returns in a month. And then it’s going to splash down in the Atlantic Ocean, it’s going to be really a matter of hours, right, until you can have your hands on the experiment and start doing some cool stuff.
Siobhan Malany: Yeah. Exactly. I mean, this has been great with being in Florida. We’re right here with the launch, and it’ll come right back. Kennedy — you know, NASA’s been wonderful. At Kennedy Space Center, we’ve got a lab that’s all set up that we worked out of to do the ground studies so far to put the payloads together and hand it over. And then it’ll come back to the same lab, and we’ll start extracting the — what’s the RNA from the chip, which is the — provide us that gene expression data that we can look at to compare with the old cells that we have, the young cells and the ground — the ground cells that we have, we can do a full comparison and look at whatever changes that have been induced while being on the space station.
Host: Is that the main thing you’re looking at, the gene expression? Or are there other things that you’re going to pull from the data?
Siobhan Malany: It’s — it is mainly the gene expression. That is something I get a lot of data from. We will have some of the video to do contraction. We’re collecting some of the media waste to see what might, you know, be — have been secreted into the waste that may be an indication of health, inflammation, these kinds of things, biomarkers, for example. So — but the main thing is going to be the gene expression changes because you can get quite a bit of information from a little bit of material from each chip.
Host: There’s so much to look forward to, Siobhan. But I — do want to go back to launch for just a second. You know, thinking about all these things that you have plans for, right, you have — you’re thinking about what you’re going to be doing on orbit, what you’re going to do when it returns back to Earth. There’s a lot of interesting science that you want to conduct with this investigation. So, when you were, you know, sitting there, wherever you were, I don’t know if you were at Kennedy or if you were just sitting at home watching it from your TV, but those moments before launch, what were some of the things going through your head?
Siobhan Malany: There are a lot of things. But, yeah, I was on base.
Host: Cool.
Siobhan Malany: On the causeway watching the day launch. And it was with the — we had our team from University of Florida, from Micro-gRx and Micro Aerospace Solutions. We’ve got some engineers from there, as well as Space Tango. So, we watched it together. I think one is that was going through was just, you know, it’s exciting. We had a launch in 2018. This is a somewhat of a repeat but a much, much bigger project. But it’s really this time about getting the data. Really want to see — you know, really be able to make some conclusions, like we are seeing these changes. This is what this might mean so we can continue building on what we’ve learned and making these models better. I think we already know there’s some things that we need to work on to make them a little — to just make them better, more robust in terms of the chip and the electrodes and the technology. I mean, there’s certainly things to work on. But so, for me, it’s exciting to see it finally go. We’ve had a lot of flight delays. And, you know, not having to go back and seat another 16 chips, if the launch was delayed is also a relief. But for me this time, it — the goal is to get data. That’s what we’ve got to bring home, some good information.
Host: And I think that’s kind of the last thing I want to explore, Siobhan, is the beginning you talked about kind of entering into this world of microgravity research through — through networking, maybe a little bit of right place, right time through the CASIS, ISS National Lab that, you know, they probably sold the idea of, you know, here’s why doing microgravity research is important. But it’s not — I don’t know if it’s a commonly known thing, you know? Why would I need to do research in microgravity? So, to you, Siobhan, what are those things about microgravity that maybe folks just don’t understand but would like to on why doing research in microgravity for their experiment would be beneficial?
Siobhan Malany: Yeah. I mean, it’s a great question. And back — I’m watching the Endeavour launch and then listening to the crystallographer that was doing some — sending some experiments up. And I was thinking, “Oh, I’m a pharmacologist. Yeah, you know, I don’t know what I would do on the space station, what I would study.” But then, just after that shuttle launch when they — when the space station really started open up to more science experiments, I mean, there’s just been a flood of ideas because it is, you know, it is an extreme laboratory. It’s a laboratory, and it offers a platform where there is real — in terms of human research, just a real effect on tissues and organs, you know, regenerative processes, cell migrate, 3D formation, there’s just there’s a lot that can be done on the space station that really is not as easy to do on Earth. And, certainly, if you have information on more age-related type of diseases that just take a long time to study on Earth, that’s a place that I think is going to be really informative for multiple — multiple tissues. So — and then we just can’t ignore that we’re explorers. I mean, we’re going to continue being in space, and we need to understand the health effects of being in space and prolonged space travel. So, I think — and just the technology in general, every time we try and do things in space, our capabilities in terms of technological advancement is really profound. So I think on all levels, and for me, it’s exciting to put the technology and the biology together and do something in terms of space medicine and uncover, really — can you discover medicines that are really going to help alleviate some of our major diseases that we have on Earth. So, it’s exciting to have this capability and access. And there’ll be different space stations. You know, this space station is not going to last forever, and those ideas that — of different ways to create research platforms in space, so I think it’s going to change tremendously over the next several years. And commercialization of different aspects are going to be a big thing as well. So, there’s a space market for sure.
Host: That’s right. Yeah. And there’s some — you know, there is this continuing, I guess, need for microgravity. I think a lot of — there’s been a lot of value to conducting research in microgravity, and I’m sure that’s something that you’re thinking about. You know, starting the company Micro-gRx and conducting some of this research, it’s very clear that you’re interested and find value in researching what microgravity can offer in terms of unlocking a couple extra things. You know, whether it’s — whether it’s the faster — you know, faster data for maybe something that is related to sarcopenia or maybe the next thing. Siobhan, I don’t know if you have other things that you’re looking forward to, other things you’re curious about that you would think maybe microgravity would be a good place to research this. Are you already thinking about the next thing?
Siobhan Malany: Yeah because I want to stay in the business [laughing]. You always have to be thinking of the next thing. Certainly, I want to expand on — you know, it’s hard science and hard technology, so expanding on what you’ve already learned is a good thing. So, I mean, looking at other muscle diseases and using patient-specific type of cells is an area. But in terms of another application, I mean, one of the — we’ve got some funding at the University of Florida, we work with University of Colorado. It’s a — drug discovery project that’s looking at diabetic wound healing. And so, there’s been a lot of interest in thinking about wound healing in space. So — and I think creating a type of tissue chip that you could — you could study how, you know, different ways to do wound healing because that would be, I think, very applicable not only for just on space, being able to have kind of skin grafts or cover wounds, that will be very important. But also, are there — do the cells migrate in a way that might be beneficial to study wound healing on space for the benefit of these ailments on Earth. So, that’s one area that I’m thinking about, just because we are getting into that here in our lab that I think would be a real benefit to study on the space station.
Host: See, I just love exploring just how broad this is. And even just within this particular field of using tissue chips, you know, what can you use it for, there is this large range of ways that you can use this technology and explore different concepts and that can really benefit a lot of folks here. And then, of course, some ideas for helping humans travel further into space. Siobhan Malany, Dr. Siobhan Malany, this has been such a fascinating conversation. It’s great to see CRS-21 docked to the International Space Station. This episode will come out while it’s still docked, so they’ll be doing some great science. I wish you all the best for all the science onboard and then, of course, for when it returns. Thanks so much for coming on Houston We Have a Podcast and sharing some of the great things you’re doing.
Siobhan Malany: Thank you. Thanks for listening. I’m glad to share. I look forward to — yeah. I look forward to seeing what we can get out of this flight.
Host: Let’s do it.
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Host: Hey, thanks for sticking around after our conversation with Dr. Siobhan Malany from Micro-gRx and University of Florida. I hope you learned something today. If you want to check out more of our podcasts, we are, Houston We Have a Podcast. We’re at NASA.gov/podcast along with a number of other shows that you can find all across NASA. If you want to talk to us on social media, we’re on the NASA Johnson Space Center pages of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Just use the hashtag #AskNASA on your favorite platform to submit an idea for the show. And make sure to mention it’s for us at Houston We Have a Podcast. This episode was recorded on December 7, 2020. Thanks to Alex Perryman, Pat Ryan, Norah Moran, Belinda Pulido, Jennifer Hernandez, Rachel Barry and Mario Garcia. Thanks again to Dr. Siobhan Malany for taking the time to come on the show. Give us a rating and feedback on whatever platform you’re listening to us on and tell us what you think. That will do it for us in 2020. Thanks for tuning in this year. It’s been a challenging one. We’re going to enjoy the holidays over the next few Fridays and be back with you on January 8 with a new episode for our “Mars Monthly” series. If you missed any of our episodes, you can listen to them in no particular order and catch up over the holidays. And if you’re completely caught up, I am so proud of you. Let us know on social media. You can check us out our friends at Curious Universe or Gravity Assist or Small Steps Giant Leaps or the many other NASA shows, if you’re still craving some podcast about space. Happy holidays. We’ll be back next year.