Commercial Antibiotic Production Experiment to Begin on Space Station

BioServe Space Technologies Center, University of Colorado at Boulder, provided a biomedical experiment to the International Space Station to test the effects of long-term microgravity on antibiotic production. In collaboration with the Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute in Wallingford, Conn., the experiment is designed to examine the production rate of an anti-cancer agent, actinomycin D, in microgravity. The project, along with two other experiments designed by other institutions and companies, will be the first commercial ventures to fly on the International Space Station (ISS).

The experiment will be using a device known as the Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus (CGBA), a suitcase-sized payload designed and built by BioServe that has been used to carry out dozens of life science and biomedical experiments in space. Versions of the CGBA have flown on 14 shuttle missions, including two that flew on Russia's Mir Space Station before its demise in March 2001.

Previous experiments by BioServe and Bristol-Myers Squibb beginning in 1995 aboard space shuttles showed the production of actinomycin D was increased by 75 percent. “In some instances, the flight samples had not yet reached peak production by the end of the shuttle missions, which last about two weeks,” said David Klaus, a CU-Boulder Aerospace Engineering associate professor. The antibiotic experiment on the space station will last about three months.

For the space station experiment, BioServe engineers have developed a more efficient flight-fermentation device that allows microbial cell cultures to be fed, their waste removed and byproducts periodically sampled. The device also exchanges gases from tiny pores in flat bags containing the microbial cell cultures with air in the space station. The experiment is automated, and can be controlled and adjusted from BioServe's Remote Payload and Operations and Control Center at the CU-Boulder campus. It will be monitored daily. Space station astronaut Jim Voss has also been trained on the apparatus.

Ground-based tests have shown that antibiotic production in the new apparatus is 200 times better than in the original test tubes. “The production levels being reached in the space flight hardware, which has to meet stringent safety and power constraints for use in the shuttle or the space station, are now approaching those of more typical lab methods on Earth,” said Klaus. “By gaining a better understanding of what is causing the stimulated production of antibiotics in space, scientists hope to design techniques that mimic the increase in productivity in labs on Earth,” Klaus said. Even a small increase in Earth-based antibiotic production could produce substantial financial gain.

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