EOS (Electrophoresis Operations in Space)

Joint venture with McDonnell Douglas and Johnson & Johnson's Ortho Pharmaceutical to make and sell pharmaceuticals made in space.

Created: 2023-03-15

Updated: 2024-03-06

Company - EOS (Electrophoresis Operations in Space)

Founded
Country: 1980; USA

Funding: Yes, ?

Product/Service - EOS-1

Classification: In-Space Manufacturing

Category: In-Space Manufacturing

Fields: Medicine and Drugs

Status: Dormant

First launch: 1982

McDonnell Douglas had an active life-science group in house. When Viking ended in 1976, they started exploring electrophoresis. But McDonnell Douglas didn't want to take on the entire responsibility for the project because seIling drugs involves knowing how to deal with doctors and with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which administers drug-testing programs. So McDonnell Douglas approached a number of drug companies, and according to one account, the typical response was that electrophoresis in space was "not going to happen until 2040."

It won't ever happen until someone is willing to take the risks. Johnson & Johnson's Ortho Pharmaceutical division did agree initially to test and sell the products made in space, leaving McDonneIl Douglas free to explore other opportunities with other institutions. The joint venture acquired a name, EOS (Electrophoresis Operations in Space), which has another meaning as weIl. Eos was the Greek goddess of dawn, and space enthusiasts hope that the EOS project will be the dawn of a new era in space.

But how were these companies going to get into space? Would they have to pay each time to fly this apparatus aboard the shuttle to perfect the process? Or would they have to go through the usual proposal procedures at NASA, whereby everything they learned at great expense would have to be shared with all corners because government organizations can't keep trade secrets? NASA was very sensitive to the need to involve the private sector to a greater extent, and it developed the concept of a Joint Endeavor Agreement (JEA). This scheme allows NASA to work with potential paying customers in a way that protects the customers' investment in the groundwork. The general idea of a JEA is that NASA and the company will share the risks of a project. In this case, NASA will fly, for free, the electrophoresis apparatus while it is being tested and producing drugs to be used in animal and human clinical trials. During this period, the company can protect proprietary information as necessary.

Once the material is marketed, the EOS project will have to pay the going rate to fly the apparatus in the shuttle or wherever they decide is best. Until the Challenger blew up, progress on this experiment was really impressive. The first flight, on the fourth flight of the space shuttle in June 1982, demonstrated that the expected improvement in volume and purity of product would happen. Preflight calculations indicated that one could double the size of the apparatus, increasing the area of the input and output holes fourfold, and improve the concentration of protein from 0.25% to 25%, a 100-fold improvement. The expected 400-fold increase in productivity was realized in practice; the separation efficiency was improved 463 times.

A year later, on the seventh shuttle flight, McDonnell Douglas tried increasing the voltage in the cell, and a 718-fold improvement over ground-based results was obtained. In 1984, they hoped to produce enough protein for the first tests on animals, but the equipment malfunctioned and the carrier solution became too hot, allowing bacterial contamination. But in April 1985, one gram of pure drug was produced, and animal testing started.

An illustration of how successful the Joint Endeavor Agreement scheme was in keeping the trade secret is that it was not until November 1985 that McDonnell Douglas released the identity of the drug that they were purifying in space. The drug is called erythropoietin, a human hormone that controls the production of red blood cells. Before this venture, it was available only in very small quantities for laboratory research and had not been used clinically.

Yet McDonnell Douglas's partner, Johnson & Johnson, seems to have got discouraged. Arecent report indicated that they had decided instead to test erythropoietin sampies made by Amgen, an earthbound genetic engineering firm. 14 Perhaps the uncertainties following the Challenger disaster, given that it's not clear at this writing how soon the electrophoresis apparatus could fly again, produced so me second thoughts. And so, it's not now clear where this particular venture is headed. McDonnell Douglas's hopes had extended far beyond erythropoietin; they had a shopping list of something like twenty drugs that they had in mind for space mimufacturing. One specific possibility has been announced: the production of beta cells in space as a possible cure for diabetes, done in collaboration with Washington University in Saint Louis.

Astronaut Charlie Walker holds a patent for the continuous flow electrophoresis (CFES) device which he worked on as a founding member of the Space Manufacturing team (later renamed Electrophoresis Operations in Space, EOS). He has researched and written numerous papers, newspaper articles, and book contributions on the EOS electrophoresis program, space development, commercialization and space history. He joined the McDonnell Douglas Corporation in 1977 as a test engineer. From 1979 to 1986, he was chief test engineer, payload specialist, and first industry commercial astronaut. This led to training NASA astronaut crews in the operation of the CFES and for Walker to become an astronaut himself.

Space drug grounded but going strong (1986-10-22)

Plans to produce a highly touted hormone in the weightlessness of space have been temporarily grounded by the Challenger disaster, but past success has allowed the drug's maker to continue work on the ground.

In one of the most successful commercial space ventures of the shuttle era, McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Co. refined a technology called electrophoresis to produce ultra-pure quantities of erythropoietin, a hormone useful in treatment of anemia.

A refrigerator-sized processor has flown six times aboard a shuttle and McDonnell Douglas was gearing up to launch a giant processor in a shuttle payload bay in July of this year before the Jan. 28 Challenger disaster groundd the nation's manned space program.

The drug factory, called EOS-1 for electrophoresis operations in space, now is tentatively scheduled for launch in 1989 as the first commercial shuttle payload in the post-Challenger era.

'Within a week after the Challenger accident, we had ceased all hardware and systems testing and we began to put the hardware in storage where it is and will remain until perhaps 10 months before our first flight,' said Charles Walker, a McDonnell Douglas engineer with three shuttle flights to his credit.

While the Challenger disaster was a major setback to the electrophoresis program, Walker said McDonnell Douglas is pressing ahead on the ground using the space-developed technology.

Walker said the company expects to enter negotiations with a pharmaceutical company 'within the next few weeks' that should lead to a new partnership agreement on the production and marketing of eyrthropoietin.

'So we are proceeding forward with the objective of commercializing that material using ground-based purification,' he said.

'While we're not at this point counting on the necessity of space flight to provide us with a commercial material, we expect that when we have the opportunity to fly the substance in space we will end up with a better material.'

In the wake of the Challenger disaster, NASA is re-evaluating the role of civilian 'payload specialists' aboard the shuttle once flights resume. For example, just five crew members, all thought to be career astronauts, currently are listed for the EOS-1 mission in 1989.

Walker said payload specialists are invaluable, not only for the electrophoresis project, but for space science in general.

'To me, it quite simply comes down to a question of who can perform an experiment better than the originator and designer of an experiment, who can more readily understand the experimental unknowns and adjust for them, than the experimenter?' he said.

The EOS-1 payload was to have been tended in orbit by McDonnell Douglas engineer Robert Wood.

'We're still telling NASA that for a first development flight of new equipment, which EOS-1 is, we require the presence of a payload specialist in order to minimize our technical risk and maximize our return,' Walker said. 'So we expect to have somebody there.'

The electrophoresis experiment often served as the symbolic leader of the fledgling microgravity industry. A number of other ventures have occurred as weIl. Most other companies are simply using the space environment to do research of interest to them, as John Deere and GTE did in exploring the properties of arcs in light bulbs and cast iron in farm tractor engines. 3M's joint endeavor with NASA, for example, involves growing crystals in orbit. Its initial emphasis is on basic research rather than on making products in orbit. Grumman, Batelle Columbus Laboratories, Union Carbide, and Westinghouse have all been cited as possible participants in similar projects.

In mid-1983, 140 separate ventures had reserved space in NASA's Get Away Special program, where $10,000 buys space to fly a smalI, selfcontained experiment on a shuttle flight.

Sources

Most sources should be linked in the texts and headings as revealed by mouse-over, but here are they listed for visibility.

[1] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/ac00262a728

[2] https://www.thermoelectric.com/2010/archives/library/Electrophoresis%20in%20Space%201985.PDF

[3] https://books.google.ee/books?id=szQBCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA150&lpg=PA150&dq=space+2000+eos&source=bl&ots=W0iVBlkKev&sig=ACfU3U0zEgl0eCXRb4mMMhLbc7fVkAk4zQ&hl=et&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiThuC7r-mAAxWRFRAIHRoJCRMQ6AF6BAgCEAM#v=onepage&q=space%202000%20eos&f=false

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