Associate Professor Sarah Kessans with protein crystallisation experiments despatched to the International Space Station in 2024.
Photo: Claire Concannon / RNZ
Researchers from the University of Canterbury have created a shoebox-sized laboratory designed to assist develop higher medicines in space.
The fully-automated lab means biotechnology experiments could be performed in microgravity, between Earth’s gravity and space’s zero gravity.
The lab is presently being ready for testing aboard NZ-Dutch firm Dawn Aerospace’s reusable unmanned spaceplane.
Leading the work is Associate Professor Sarah Kessans of University of Canterbury’s Faculty of Engineering.
She informed RNZ’s Nine to Noon the microgravity surroundings is necessary for rising higher-quality protein crystals.
“What we’re trying to do is get better pictures of what a protein looks like on an atomic level,” stated Kessans. “That enables us to develop drugs against those proteins.”
“So for example in case you have a most cancers protein; if you understand precisely what it seems to be like you’ll be able to design a drug to bind to that protein and basically cease that most cancers cell.
“In a microgravity environment you don’t have heavy things sinking, or light things floating, or critically, having what are called convection currents, so lots of things flying around in sort of random orientations.”
Kessans stated some proteins will not cystalise on Earth resulting from that motion, or solely in a poor high quality.
She stated microgravity permits protein crystals to type extra good crystal lattices, what she referred to as a “repeating pattern of lots and lots, thousands and thousands, of molecules that basically form a pattern.”
She likens it to a Rubik’s Cube – the long-lasting cubic puzzle from the Eighties.
“In microgravity you get a perfect cube, that perfect lattice.”
Practical functions
Kessans stated there are two functions for what they’re doing in microgravity.
One is with the ability to carry that good crystal again to Earth after which “shooting X-rays at it” to know how the electrons scatter, to know the protein construction.
The different is precise drug formulation – a first-rate instance being drug firm Merck sending the anti-cancer drug Keytruda to the International Space Station in 2007, and crystalising it there so they may make a brand new formulation.
“Normally Keytruda must be administered in a hospital setting, which takes about two to a few hours in an IV infusion. The crystalline formulation that they developed in space basically could be administered in a GP clinic as a subcutaneous shot. So, a a lot better consequence for the affected person and clearly a a lot better consequence for Merck, and so they’ve bought an entire new patent household and FDA approval for this new formulation.
“What we’re developing is essentially a high throughput screening service both for protein crystal screening, so for that drug development and drug discovery, and then also formulation screening as well.”
Collaborators and future clients
Kessans stated the challenge is a collaboration of a multidisciplinary staff that features specialists from Canterbury University, Auckland University, and teachers round NZ.
She stated they acquired seed funding from Science for Technological Innovation to make a prototype, and $10 million in MBIE funding that enabled them to fly the prototype to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2024.
The newest section of the challenge has acquired $600,000 by the Kiwi Space Activator programme, introduced by the Minister for Space, Chris Penk, in May 2026.
Kessans stated that funding will allow the subsequent section of testing with Dawn Aerospace, together with Intranel and Asteria Engineering, to check elements of the complete scale model aboard Dawn’s spaceplane, earlier than it goes to the ISS.
“We will be the first mission of its kind, conducting multiple spaceplane microgravity flights, and going to space twice in a single day.”
She stated the subsequent step is a brand new firm providing companies to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, who can then “go on and make the drugs… from the data we provide them.”
“This is gonna be a big year,” Kessans stated, “so stay tuned for the wider role we will play in the commercial space industry.”
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