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Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington                June 24, 2003
(Phone: 202/358-1726)

Steve Roy
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
(Phone: 256/544-0034)

RELEASE: 03-209

NASA BIOTECHNOLOGY ACTIVITIES ENHANCING QUALITY OF LIFE

What do an anthrax-killing device, soybeans in space, artificial bone
replacement materials, light-emitting diodes for wound healing, a new
medicine to treat bone loss, a water bottle that filters out
bacteria, a perfume, and advanced techniques for pharmaceutical drug
design have in common?

These technologies and others have or are being developed by more
than 150 companies that are partners with NASA's Space Product
Development Program (SPDP) and its 15 Research Partnership Centers
(RPC's) across America.

"Industry is interested in many of the same revolutionary products
and technologies that NASA needs to explore the universe," said Mark
Nall, director of the Space Commerce Office at NASA's Marshall Space
Flight Center (MSFC), Huntsville, Ala. "When industry, academia and
NASA come together, industry positions itself for growth in new
commercial markets, while academia and NASA benefit from innovative
research and technological tools for exploration," he said.

Space and Osteoporosis Research and Treatment

Muscle and bone loss is one health-related problem that both NASA and
industry are tackling. Since bone loss occurs more rapidly in space,
Amgen, a biotechnology company with headquarters in Thousand Oaks,
Calif., used NASA's Space Shuttle as a test bed for a new medication
to treat bone loss or osteoporosis. Amgen discovered osteoprotegerin
(OPG) in the mid 1990s, and is conducting human clinical trials to
evaluate its safety and effectiveness in treating osteoporosis and
its ability to maintain bone density in cancer that has metastasized
to bone. 

"OPG appears to prevent bone loss in a variety of diseases, including
cancer, and we anticipate that a drug based on this molecule will be
effective in preserving bone mass, whether in astronauts or the
millions of Americans suffering from osteoporosis," said Dr. Paul
Kostenuik, a research scientist in Amgen's Metabolic Disorders group.

Amgen works with BioServe Space Technologies Inc., a NASA Research
Partnership Center at the University of Colorado, which has completed
23 research missions in 12 years on both the Space Shuttle and the
International Space Station. BioServe and its industry partners are
studying antibiotic production, mammalian cell culture and plant
biochemistry. 

Crops for Space and Earth

Identifying unique chemical and genetic traits of plants grown in
space and using these traits to develop commercial products on Earth
is the specialty of another NASA RPC: the Wisconsin Center for Space
Automation and Robotics (WCSAR) at the University of Wisconsin in
Madison. With the help of astronaut Peggy Whitson, they grew the
first crop of soybeans on the Space Station for their industrial
partner, Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc., a DuPont subsidiary with
headquarters in Des Moines, Iowa. 

This experiment verified that WCSAR-developed plant growth
technologies were capable of producing a major agricultural crop in
space. The second objective was to see whether microgravity would
alter the production of phytochemicals, such as proteins, oils and
carbohydrates, and induce new genetic traits in the soybean seeds
produced in space. DuPont pursued this research because it could
significantly reduce the time and cost of introducing new varieties
of crops with new types of phytochemicals to the marketplace.

Scientists are performing tests on the seeds brought back to Earth in
October 2002. Some of the soybean seeds produced in space were
planted and did prove to be viable, producing a new crop of plants
with seeds on Earth. Scientists have found some of the space seeds'
phytochemical compositions are different than those in seeds
harvested from the ground control experiment. Researchers are
continuing their analysis to determine if these changes in
composition result in positive changes to seed quality. "We want to
examine the seeds produced by plants grown on the Space Station to
see if they have any unique, desirable traits," said Dr. Tom Corbin,
a research scientist for Pioneer Hi-Bred. "If we find changes, then
we want to know if the positive traits can be inherited genetically
by future generations of plants for the benefit of farmers and
consumers." 

This commercial experiment and others that study plant growth are
paving the way for improving crops grown on Earth, as well as
potentially feeding people living in space. The Space Station gives
companies a chance to grow plants that are larger and require several
months to mature. Several new products, including an anthrax-killing
device, a system derived from an ethylene scrubber that keeps fruits
and vegetables fresher when they are stored or transported, wound
healing and surgical tools, all evolved from technology that WCSAR
originally developed to grow plants on the Space Station.

Drug Discovery Through Space Research

The Center for Biophysical Sciences and Engineering (CBSE), an RPC
located at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, partners with
industry to enable NASA to stretch research dollars. The CBSE, under
the direction of Dr. Larry DeLucas, a payload specialist on Shuttle
mission STS-50, is a leading structural biology center with one of
the largest facilities in the world for X-ray crystallography, as
well as a platform of proprietary high throughput technologies
designed for structure based drug discovery. 

CBSE has developed a suite of technologies to rapidly determine the
biological structures necessary to produce new therapeutics and
pharmaceuticals. This research has led to the development of drugs
designed to treat various chronic and infectious diseases. The
predictive power that comes from molecular research in the drug
discovery process can significantly advance the launch of new drugs
for the safety and health of humans on earth and those traveling in
space. 

The SPDP is part of NASA's Office of Biological and Physical Research
at Headquarters in Washington. For more information about research
and science programs, visit: 
http://spaceresearch.nasa.gov/

For information about NASA and commercial space exploration on the
Internet, visit: 
http://www.nasa.gov

For information about the Space Product Development Program, visit:
http://www.spd.nasa.gov

For information about the BIO 2003 Conference, visit:
http://bio.org/events/2003/

To download photographs to accompany this news release, visit:
http://www.msfc.nasa.gov/news
 
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