Created: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2024-07-27
Company - SpacePharma
Product/Service - SPACTORY
- Classification
- In-Space Manufacturing
- Category
- Microgravity Flight Service (LEO)
ISS Utilization Service
Microgravity Science
- Fields
- Automated Microgravity Laboratory
- Status
- Demonstrated, Active
- First launch
- 2017
SpacePharma launched to the ISS aboard all-private Axiom-1 Mission.
- Aleph Farms is investigating in-situ cultivated meat in microgravity for future space exploration missions and potential benefits back on Earth.
- AMORPHICAL is studying the use of Amorphous Calcium Carbonate to improve bone and muscle cell growth during space travel.
- CADW Therapeutics looks at the stress and DNA damage response during spaceflight.
SPACTORY
Revolutionising pharmaceutical development and manufacturing through microgravity.
ZEPRION EXPERIMENT
LAUNCH ON MISSION NG-19 TO INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
SpacePharma simply microgravity TM will explore, by using its state-of-the-art miniaturized laboratory known as SPNR2, the potential of microgravity for achieving the co-crystallization of a small molecule bound to a folding intermediate of the prion protein, a key player in devastating disorders of the brain called prion diseases.
- Together with the CJD Foundation chaired by Mrs Alice Anane and with an international collaboration of academic teams, the company has been working for two years to define the new space-based method of resolving the three dimensional structure partially folded structures of these proteins, with important implications in the development of new drug candidates.
- Pharmacological Protein Inactivation by Folding Intermediate Targeting (PPI-FIT) is a novel revolutionary paradigm for rational drug discovery, introduced by Prof. Pietro Faccioli (U. Milan-Bicocca, Italy) and Emiliano Biasini (U. Trento, Italy).
- In practice, the PPI-FIT protocol relies on advanced computer simulations to reconstruct in-silico the folding process of the target protein with an atomic degree of resolution. Computational methods of medicinal chemistry are then applied to identify small molecules that can bind on pockets that are present in protein long-lived configurations transiently visited only during the folding process and not present in the native state.
- The binding to the small molecule prevents the completion of the folding process, and the target protein is spontaneously degraded by the cell quality control machinery. The primary goal of the ZePrion experiment is to define a roadmap to boost drug discovery based on the PPI-FIT technology, by considering and comparing different experimental protocols to crystallize protein folding intermediates in microgravity conditions.
- All of that in a small 3.4kg laboratory, with remote control of microfluidics from earth, and experiment execution done in space. The ZePrion experiment is conducted by a consortium of scientists from European universities and from SpacePharma Research, which includes the inventors of the PPI-FIT technology, along with the laboratories led by Prof. Jesus Requena at University of Santiago de Compostela and Dr. Pietro Roversi, at the Italian Research Council.
News, Research, Projects and Patents
Title | Type | Date | Summary |
---|---|---|---|
Spacepharma wants to manufacture medicine among the stars | News | 2021-02-14 |