6. Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus

The Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus (CGBA) payload is sponsored by BioServe Space Technologies, a NASA Center for the Commercial Development of Space (CCDS), located at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The purpose of the CGBA is to allow a wide variety of sophisticated biomaterials, life sciences and biotechnology investigations to be performed in one device in the low gravity environment of space.

During the STS-60 mission, the CGBA supported 32 separate commercial investigations, which can be loosely classified in three application areas: biomedical testing and drug development, controlled ecological life support system (CELSS) development, and agricultural development and manufacture of biological-based materials.

Biomedical Testing and Drug Development -- To collect information on how microgravity affects biological organisms, the CGBA included twelve biomedical test models. Of the twelve test models, four are related to immune disorders: one investigated the process in which certain cells engulf and destroy foreign materials (phagocytosis); another studied bone marrow cell cultures; two others studied the ability of the immune system to respond to infectious-type materials (lymphocyte and T-cell induction); and one investigated the ability of immune cells to kill infectious cells (TNF-Mediated Cytotoxicity).

The other eight test models -- which were related to bone and developmental disorders, toxicological wound healing, cancer and cellular disorders -- investigated bone tissue, miniature wasp development testing, brine shrimp development, inhibition of cell division processes, stimulation of cell division processes and the ability of protein channels to pass materials through cell membranes.

Test model results provide information to better understand diseases and disorders that affect human health, including cancer, osteoporosis and AIDS. In the future, these models may be used for the development and testing of new drugs to treat these diseases.

7. Organic Separation

The Consortium for Materials Development in Space (CMDS) based at the University of Alabama in Huntsville developed the Organic Separation (ORSEP) payload for flight on STS-60.

ORSEP offers the commercial and scientific communities the opportunity to separate cells and particles based on their surface properties using a process known as counter current phase partitioning. Such separations cannot be carried to equilibrium on earth because sedimentation influences the separation before partitioning equilibrium can be established. It is hoped that equilibrium separations produce subpopulations with nearly identical surface properties rather than with some contamination of surface and density that is presently the case with earth-based users. The potential commercial value of separations includes the opportunity to identify subpopulations, to study the purified samples and to culture cell subpopulations for cell product.

The Principal Investigator of ORSEP is Dr. Robert J. Naumann, University of Alabama in Huntsville.

The Center for Macromolecular Crystallography (CMC), based at the University of Alabama in Birmingham (UAB), sponsored protein crystal growth (PCG) experiments on STS-60. The CMC is a NASA Center for the Commercial Development of Space (CCDS), which forms a bridge between NASA and private industry to stimulate biotechnology research for growing protein crystals in space and offers other protein crystallography services to a wide range of pharmaceutical, chemical and biotechnology companies.

The objective of space-based protein crystal growth experiments, on STS-60 SPACEHAB-2, was to produce large, well-ordered crystals of various proteins. These crystals were then used in ground-based studies to determine the three-dimensional structures of the proteins. These experiments also continue to investigate how to control and optimize protein crystal growth in order to reduce uncertainties or risks associated with using this space-based process as a vital and enabling technology for many critical areas.

The SPACEHAB-01 protein crystal growth experiments were extremely successful. Three of the seven proteins flown produced superior data when compared to the very best crystals ever obtained by earth-grown methods using any other crystallization.

Since proteins play an important role in everyday life -- from providing nourishment to fighting diseases -- research in this area is quickly becoming a viable commercial industry. Scientists need large, well-ordered crystals to study the structure of a protein and to learn how its structure determines a protein's functions.

The technique most widely used to determine a protein's three-dimensional structure is X-ray crystallography, which requires large, well-ordered crystals for analysis. Crystals produced on earth often are large enough to study, but they usually have numerous gravity-induced flaws. However, space-produced crystals tend to have more highly-ordered structures that significantly facilitate X-ray diffraction studies.

Studies of such crystals not only can provide information on basic biological processes, but they may lead to the development of food with higher protein content, the production of highly resistant crops and, of great importance, the development of more effective drugs. By studying the growth rates of crystals under different conditions, scientists can find ways to improve crystal growth in microgravity, thus providing higher quality crystals for study and the ability to produce satisfactory protein crystals that are hard or impossible to grow on earth.

9. Crystallization Facility Experiments

There were two PCG experiments on STS-60. They were contained in two thermal control enclosures called Commercial Refrigerator/Incubator Modules (CRIM). Each CRIM contains a Protein Crystallization Facility (PCF), and one was modified with a light scattering (LS) system and is called PCFLS.

The PCF has been successful in inducing crystallization of human insulin by lowering the temperature of one end of a cylindrical crystallization chamber from 40oC to 22oC over a period of 24 hours. Since the rest of the chamber takes time to match the temperature of the controlled end, the crystals are formed within a temperature gradient.

The light scattering system is designed to detect crystals at the nucleation stage, before they would be visible by ordinary microscopy. The information is used to alert the astronauts of initial crystal formation. After they know that crystals have formed; they decrease the rate at which the temperature of the controlled end falls. This allows the crystals that have formed to grow more slowly and more perfectly in the weightlessness of space.

With continued research, the commercial applications developed using protein crystal growth have phenomenal potential, and the number of proteins that need study exceeds tens of thousands. Current research with the aid of pharmaceutical companies may lead to a whole new generation of drugs, which could be able to help treat diseases such as cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, periodontal disease, influenza, septic shock, emphysema, aging and AIDS. These possibilities, plus drugs and other products for agriculture, proteins for bioprocessing in manufacturing processes and waste management, and other biotechnical applications, represent critical capabilities for dealing with the future of our world.

A number of companies are participating in the CMC's protein crystal growth project including: BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Eli Lilly & Co., Schering-Plough Research, Du Pont, Merck Pharmaceuticals, Sterling Winthrop Inc., Eastman Kodak Co., The Upjohn Co., Smith Kline Beecham Pharmaceuticals, and Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Principal Investigator for the STS-60 protein crystal growth experiments is Dr. Charles E. Bugg, Director of the CMC.

10. Space Acceleration Measurement System

NASA's Microgravity Science and Applications Division at the Lewis Research Center is sponsoring the Space Acceleration Measurement System (SAMS) on the STS-60 mission. The SAMS is designed to measure and record low-level accelerations during experiment operations. The signals from these sensors are amplified, filtered and converted to digital data before being stored on optical disks and sent via downlink to the ground control center.

Scientists use the SAMS data in different ways, depending on the nature of the science experiment and the principal investigators' experience and ground-based testing results. The principal investigators typically look for acceleration events or conditions that exceed a threshold where the experiment results could be affected. This may be, for example, a frequency versus amplitude condition, an energy content condition or simply an acceleration magnitude threshold.

SAMS flight hardware was designed and developed in-house by the NASA Lewis Research Center. Ronald Sicker is the SAMS Project Manager and Richard Delombard is responsible for analyzing SAMS data.