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Pharma looks to outer space to boost drug R&D

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https://www.the-scientist.com/bio-busine...-rd--68183

EXCERPT: Scientific research in space has thrived over the past decade, but it’s only recently that the pharmaceutical and biotech sector has started getting in on the action, pursuing new ways to study drugs and other medical treatments. Pharma giants including Merck, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, and Sanofi, along with dozens of smaller companies, have all sent experiments to the ISS to reap the unique benefits of microgravity.

Of the 150 or so life science research projects supported in the 2019-2020 fiscal year by the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS)—a nonprofit that collaborates with NASA to manage the US National Laboratory on the ISS—more than a third have been led by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, says CASIS’s interim chief scientist, Mike Roberts.

Such endeavors could one day help improve astronaut health and equip humanity for longer ventures into space, but their primary aim is to develop or improve drugs for people on Earth. That’s certainly the hope of Greco and his colleagues, who found out a few months after that December afternoon that, as they’d hypothesized, the proteins layered in space appeared to have more-orderly arrangements—an improvement that could benefit the artificial retina’s function.

Studies such as these have yet to yield new blockbuster drugs or even significant improvements to existing ones. Research in space is slow, and the costs are sky-high. All projects are subsidized through NASA, and many rely on additional financial support through federal grants, spurring a new kind of space race—one aiming to prove that such projects are profitable enough for the private sector to fund on their own.

“Overcoming that 1G gravitational pull to get rockets up to low Earth orbit or beyond is expensive still,” says Roberts. But even so, “we’ve seen a significant uptick in interest” in conducting experiments in space... (MORE - details)
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