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 |  | NASA to Announce Space Station Biotech Deal
By Mary Motta
Senior Business Correspondent
posted: 07:00 pm ET
13 September 2000
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Good neighborhoods help you grow
WASHINGTON -- NASA will announce on Thursday a commercial venture with Fisk Johnson -- of SC Johnson and company, makers of Scrubbing Bubbles and Windex -- that could lead to new treatment options for patients who face organ-transplant surgery, according to congressional sources.
Johnson will join NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin on Capitol Hill Thursday to announce the joint deal between the agency and Johnson's venture capital group, Fisk Ventures, sources said.
For three years, NASA has been working closely with Fisk's group to test what is technically possible and commercially viable in cultivating cells from mammals using NASA's Bioreactor technology.
A spokesperson from SC Johnson declined comment, referring all calls to NASA Headquarters. Calls to NASA were not returned.
Sources tell SPACE.com that Fisk Johnson and NASA will announce a biotech commercial venture.
But sources close to the deal said that Fisk Ventures will be working with NASA to license land-based cell culturing technology researched and developed by NASA. These licenses will help with space-based commercial ventures on the International Space Station, the sources said.
The bioreactor is a soup-can-sized container with a clear shell that allows scientist to check cell growth in the cylinder. The center of the container has a filter that passes oxygen and nutrients in and carbon dioxide and wastes out. This helps the fluid rotate without forces that would destroy the cells. The rotating vessel doesn’t actually cancel gravity, but it maintains cells in continual free-fall similar to microgravity conditions in space.
In addition, the cells that are created are 3-D, instead of the flat, one-cell thick specimens normally produced by cell cultures.
"These cells make testing protocols on cells more realistic," the congressional source said.
Such tests are crucial to understanding the chemistry and mechanics of organ tissue, cancer cells, infectious diseases, immune-system failures and other public health problems.
As cells multiply, they build a complex matrix of collagens, proteins and fibers that allow them to identify what surrounds them, providing important clues on how to grow and into what shapes.
During long space missions, these large-sample cells grow in bioreactors and can be studied in order to understand the growth of complex tissues, such as human organs. Kidney and heart tissues cultured in the bioreactor can also show the appropriate drug-receptor sites that allow testing of drugs to determine their safety.
In the past, NASA bioreactor tests have targeted the following health issues:
- Cancer: Prostate, breast, ovary, lung and colon
- Diabetes: Work on pancreatic tissue for transplant
- Therapies: Musculoskeletal tissue disorders
- Drug efficacy: Non-animal/non-clinical testing of drug effects and toxicity
- Infectious diseases: HIV virus, Ebola virus, Lyme disease
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