The MTPConnect Podcast
The MTPConnect Podcast Series connects with the people and the issues behind Australia’s growing medical technologies, biotechnologies and pharmaceuticals sector.
The MTPConnect Podcast
Why Space Matters for Advancing Life Sciences Research
To mark our 200th episode, we are taking you into Space to discover the benefits of microgravity for health and medical research and its real-world applications. Can we use space technology to advance medical discoveries to improve health here on earth? And should we be doing more to connect our life science sector innovators into Australia’s space research sector?
We meet leading Australian superstars working at the intersection of space and health technologies at MTPConnect SA’s Insights Series event “What’s Your Place in Space’, celebrating Australian Space Week in Adelaide.
Australia’s first astronaut, Katherine Bennell-Pegg, Director of Space Technology at the Australian Space Agency shares her view on why space matters, and the role of astronauts on the International Space Station as scientists in space. She reveals how biotech research in space using microgravity is revolutionising pharmaceutical development and unlocking treatments for cancer here on Earth.
Aerospace medicine specialist Dr Gordon Cable from Human Aerospace, is working on a spacesuit design program, developing compression garments that "trick" the body into thinking gravity exists, with applications for burns, lymphedema and post-surgical recovery.
Dr Richard Harvey from the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space explains how the international research consortium is engineering smart plants in space labs, that operate as programmable biological factories for biomolecule synthesis, to produce pharmaceuticals, including compounds that protect against radiation and improve cancer therapies.
And Tiffany Sharp from Cambrian Defence and Space discusses launching medical research into space on a rocket in the Arctic circle - looking into the gut microbiome which shows how certain bacteria affecting anxiety and depression decline in microgravity, offering insights for mental health treatments.
This is the MTP Connect podcast, connecting you with the people behind the life-saving innovations driving Australia's growing life sciences sector from bench to bedside for better health and well-being. Mtp Connect acknowledges the traditional owners of country that this podcast is recorded on and recognises that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are Australia's first storytellers and the holders of first science knowledge.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline Jewell, and welcome to our 200th episode. To mark this special milestone, we're taking you to Adelaide for Space Week to connect with leading Australian experts working at the intersection of space and human health innovations. What are the benefits of microgravity for health and medical research and its real-world applications, and can we use space technology for health needs here on Earth? We'll be talking with Australia's first astronaut, catherine Bernal-Pegg, who is Director of Space Technology for the Australian Space Agency, as well as Tiffany Sharp from Cambrian Defence and Space, dr Richard Harvey from the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space and aerospace medicine specialist, dr Gordon Cable from Human Aerospace. Here to tell us more is Catherine Bunnell-Pegg, australian astronaut and Director of Space Technology for the Australian Space Agency.
Speaker 3:I'm Catherine Bunnell-Pegg, australian astronaut at the Australian Space Agency. I'm an engineer by background. I've worked as a space engineer for about the last 15 years, working on rockets and satellites and space stations, and more compelling missions than I could have ever hoped for, and you also have a I'd call it an official title at the Australian Space Agency.
Speaker 2:What's?
Speaker 3:that Well, Astronaut and Director of Space Technology.
Speaker 2:Tell me a little bit more about the intersection between space technology and health technology.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's so many intersections between space technology and health technology. Yeah, there's so many intersections between space technology and health technology and, on astronaut training, I was absolutely blown away by the breadth and the depth of this. I didn't even do biology in year 11 or year 12, so I had a real baptism of fire there. But to start with, you know, space is a place, space is ultimately an eye in the sky from which we can see phenomenon around the world and from up there we can see so much air pollution or indicators for pollen movements to warn people with health issues about this as it's being forecasted, or predicting disease outbreaks like malaria, from where mosquitoes might be breeding because of weather mosquitoes might be breeding because of weather and what you can see from this high point in space, you can connect and that allows you to do things like telemedicine and telerobotic surgery. And what you can connect from up there you can inform, like with GPS, for example, which allows for tracking and monitoring of runs on Strava or, more importantly, for dementia patients, where they might be located or ensuring appropriate transport of drugs and the quality of the environment they're transported in, like temperature and humidity. And there's the spinouts, like even the big, beautiful space telescopes with pure science objectives have helped with things like MRI and CT scan. Technology developments and laser developments in space contributed to laser eye surgery, but, most critically, I think the health outcomes on earth have been advanced by putting humans in space, particularly on the International Space Station, which is a huge space station 109 meters across, is almost as big as a soccer field, and it's been operating up there for more than 25 years with people on it that whole time different people, but people on it that whole time and basically, as astronauts, we study sciences, health sciences and life sciences and various forms of biology, because we're scientists in the sky, or, probably more accurately, lab techs in the sky with the hands and the eyes of our country scientists on the ground up there.
Speaker 3:In fact, 70 to 80 percent of an astronaut's time in space is usually on microgravity sciences, of which health is a huge part. Plus, our bodies are medical guinea pigs in space, right because of how the body responds to the space environment, especially weightlessness or microgravity. Um, so many systems of the body change. Every system of the body is affected and it's often affected in a way that is like a accelerated disease on earth. So if you didn't exercise for two hours a day in space, you'd lose bone mass at six to seven times the rate of a postmenopausal unmedicated woman, which is, for astronauts, one to 2% of bone mass a month. And so we test subjects for osteopenia, so diseases like osteoporosis, and it's an important reminder for me that the human body responds differently if you're male or female to many of these conditions, and it's an important reason why we need to have more women being astronauts.
Speaker 2:Wow, it's great to hear that, that we need more representation of both sexes in space. Is that why space matters? Because it's about, once you think about humans on Earth, you need to consider the alternate atmosphere around Earth and our place in it yeah, I mean, I think ultimately, space is about the future, right like.
Speaker 3:It's about protecting and monitoring our planet and all of us on it to improve our quality of life, and it's also to create economic opportunity and complexity and basically to contribute to big global challenges like climate change and others. If you look at the united nations sustainable development goals, space is fundamentally relevant to every single one of those and helping to address it, and that's because we got there to make discoveries we can't down here with gravity and the atmosphere in the way. So it's not just new pharma up there, it's new medical devices, it's psychology and adaption to new environments, it's antimicrobial materials, and the list goes on.
Speaker 2:You are a huge believer in the medical and scientific advances that can be made from experiments conducted in space. What sort of biotech research is going on up there in space right now?
Speaker 3:Well, right now on the International Space Station they have the crew called Expedition 73, and that's got seven crew on it and right now I looked up what they were doing. Yesterday and yesterday they were maintaining their muscles and monitoring their health as top research priorities. So basically, experiments included electric muscle stimulation in combination with exercising. So they had two astronauts working together, one with these electric stimulation devices and another one with various monitoring devices to see how their body was responding things like sensor-packed headbands and vests and breathing apparatuses. The day before there was a focus on the heart and the nervous systems adaptation to weightlessness, using an ultrasound for heart scans, for example, up there. And then virtual reality was used to study how an astronaut's nervous system and sense of balance can adapt, and those kinds of research outcomes can inform recovery on earth for people that have had injuries or had strokes. And they're part of what's called the cipher suite of 14 different human research experiments going on up there now 14.
Speaker 2:yeah gee, I've never thought about that sort of research going up on the ISS. I always, you know, see it going across the sky and I think they're just doing things like chemical analysis of the environment and, you know, weather patterns and star searching and Incredible Every field of science is relevant.
Speaker 3:Every technology readiness level is relevant. It's an absolutely remarkable piece of infrastructure for science, and the astronauts up there are just the visible tip of the iceberg of thousands of researchers working on these important, nutty challenges on the ground.
Speaker 2:One of the biggest challenges is that humans face, of course, is cancer. What can you tell us about how the space environment could help in terms of finding treatments for cancer?
Speaker 3:Yeah, cancer research has been one of the priority topics of the International Space Station and there's a number of ways that it is being investigated. Ultimately, the research pathways in space come down to the environment, microgravity. So in microgravity you can think of it like there being no up or down, which means if you think of a beaker full of a solution, there's no bottom or top, which means heavy things don't go to the bottom, light things don't go to the top, so a solution can be more uniform. We also don't have an up or down, so heat doesn't create heat driven convection, so you have less fluid mixing and we also allow for, because things float, nothing drops to the bottom of a flask or has to grow in 2D, it's 3D environments without container interactions. So with all that combined it means surface tension and diffusion dominate At the cellular level. We now know that many cells detect gravity because they have sedimentation and buoyancy mechanisms within the cells. So we've seen that human cells often age faster, which lets us do accelerated ageing research. We know in space that you can grow spheroids or clusters of cells, organoids, and investigate, say, hypoxic cells in the middle of clusters more closely resembling a tumour. So you can look at the mechanism on complex tumours, particularly complex 3D tumours. So one example is the UK Space Agency has recently funded an investigation into diffused midline glioma, which is a brain cancer In fact the brain cancer Neil Armstrong's daughter unfortunately passed away from and that's because it can grow in 3D in space and you can understand it Looking at those effects. What happens in space is crystals grow larger, more purely, more uniformly and more slowly, and that means you can have big crystals grow, which can be protein crystals or metal crystals or pharmaceutical crystals, and that helps us to understand what we're doing better on Earth. So on Earth, most crystals that are protein-based there's hundreds we can't see with our microscopes. They're too small.
Speaker 3:So it's been used to advance treatments into diseases. One example is Merck's Keytruda immunotherapy cancer drug. They've been on the space station and learned so much about their drug up there. Two main things the first is they were able to decouple different effects like temperature and sedimentation and create a more suitable product, and so they've been able to apply that understanding to earth-based processes to improve them on the ground. The second is that the solution in microgravity was viscous, which means by replicating that it could actually be created. In a way it could be a subcutaneous injection rather than 30 minutes in an IV bag.
Speaker 3:And if you think what that means on the ground, practically that means patients don't have to sit in a hospital setting to have this drug. They can live in more rural and remote areas, they don't have to travel interstate or even, in some cases, between countries. So it can change millions of lives. And that's for one drug. But the process that they've learnt in fact applies to many kinds of that type of drug. So it's actually been predicted by Sierra Space that advances in cancer treatments and technologies for diagnosis in microgravity could in fact reduce cancer mortality globally by 1%, already worth half a trillion dollars if you look at it from an economic standpoint. And the list goes on and on. There's diagnostic devices using bubbles that are being developed, and so on. I'm really proud to be part of this industry that is working on this.
Speaker 2:And what do you think about the opportunities for the Australian space industry and our life sciences sector to work more closely together to improve human health?
Speaker 3:Well, we've got a really broad and thriving domestic biotech sector here in Australia and are a really globally recognised hub for life science innovation, not just for humans, but also agriculture and horticulture and other kinds of biology and, as well with that strong focus on research, commercialisation and coupled with that, we have an emerging space sector with its own strengths. So here in South Australia we're a unique destination for launch and returns. We've had the first commercial space capsule returning to a commercial spaceport anywhere in the world here recently in the red dirt of Western South Australia. Avada is the company that's landing into Southern Launch, which is a South Australian company, and that's been backed up with multiple returns within weeks. And Vata's just had their Series C raise of 187 million US dollars, which is showing investors are backing this market, and one of their landers had pharmaceutical products on it. So the ground is shifting when we have advantages. We're now one of seven space agencies to have trained and qualified an astronaut for the ISS, yes, and so we've got new access and insights into this world, even just through the training so far alone, I think. So with that considered, we also need to look at the timeliness of the opportunity to get involved.
Speaker 3:The International Space Station is currently planned to go out to 2030, so it's coming to the sunset of its life, but there's still opportunity to utilise it. In the meantime. There are commercial space stations in development, there are these capsules, and it's a great time to get in on the ground floor to see what our role here is. And Australia does have some excellent discrete examples already of researchers using microgravity. We're hearing about them today on the panel and from the other people on this podcast, but we don't yet have a big central activity around it. Across the country, it's more discrete research occurring and it's a bit of a blind spot, to be honest, I think, for Australia. If people aren't aware that microgravity is a laboratory in space, being the largest part, but there's also facilities on ground, then we're not making the use of it and taking all the opportunities. So I hope to make people aware of this as an opportunity for their research and their applications.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. Thank you for coming on the podcast, Catherine, and for sharing your passion and enthusiasm and the opportunities that are out there for Australian life sciences sector researchers, innovators and scientists.
Speaker 3:Thank you. I have so much to learn on this topic too, so I look forward to the exchanges. Thank you.
Speaker 4:I'm Dr Gordon Cable. I'm a specialist in aerospace medicine. I've made a whole career of that, really working for the Air Force in high-performance military aviation, and then latterly got really interested in space, I guess as a result of that background. So for the last 15 years or so I've been very keen to explore what Australia is doing in space, life sciences and medicine, promoting that, producing courses and training in that field for people who are interested in doing that sort of thing. So yes, my background is medicine, medically trained, specializing in aerospace medicine, and now working predominantly for my own company, human Aerospace, as a head of flight medicine.
Speaker 2:Welcome Gordon, it's great to have you on the podcast.
Speaker 4:Thanks, carolyn.
Speaker 2:So you're interested in space medicine, and so are we, which is why we're here today to talk about this fascinating area. What does space medicine mean and what does it involve?
Speaker 4:Well, goodness me how much time. It really depends on from which perspective you look at that. I mean, space medicine is about keeping humans safe and well and alive in a really challenging environment. So it's about human spaceflight and making sure that the people who go to space are fit and well and also developing countermeasures to counter the extreme environment they're in. So I guess that's one side of it. I mean, the other side of it is you know what we can do in terms of medical research in space? I mean, once we get humans up there and we can get payloads into space, what can we learn in that microgravity environment that we can't learn on Earth because the environment is so different? And we can do a whole bunch of different medical research projects which we just can't do on Earth.
Speaker 2:Tell me about the biomedical aspects of spaceflight and that environment. Why is it so different?
Speaker 4:Well, the GWI. Again, there are many aspects to that. I guess, focusing on the elements which are most relevant to the work that we do at Human Aerospace, it's the microgravity environment. I think that's most important. We could talk all day about all the different environmental challenges, even radiation and so on, but microgravity the way that it affects bones and muscles bones waste away, muscles waste away unless they're loaded and exercised.
Speaker 4:The vestibular system, which is the body system that looks after your balance and posture and locomotion, that becomes more adapted to a microgravity environment than Earth. So that means that when you come back to Earth or you land on the Moon or Mars, you can't balance and walk and move about as well. And finally, there's the cardiovascular issues, which is what we're primarily focusing on at the moment with human aerospace. That's, looking at what happens to blood pressure when you return from a microgravity environment. How do you support that? How do you prevent the dramatic falls that can sometimes occur in blood pressure when you come back from space? And preventing using different suit technologies that we might talk about later to try and prevent some of the cardiovascular effects of microgravity, even while you're in space?
Speaker 2:try and prevent some of the cardiovascular effects of microgravity, even while you're in space. So the challenges that people face when they go into space, for instance on safe space missions you're trying to maintain some sort of like standard body operation that you would normally have on Earth.
Speaker 4:That's right. So the suits, for example, are trying to trick the body into thinking that gravity is still acting in this really challenging environment. It's funny. I mean, microgravity is an extreme environment, but humans are incredibly adaptable creatures and it isn't very long and, as you know, astronauts who go to space you see them flying around like superman or woman in the space station. I mean, it doesn't take them long to get used to that and they're moving around like it's not a problem. But it's the gravity transition that's the problem. It's the getting to space and adapting to that and they're moving around like it's not a problem, but it's the gravity transition that's the problem. It's the getting to space and adapting to that, but then it's coming home again and re-adapting to that. So it's the transitions of gravity that are a big problem for the astronauts.
Speaker 2:Tell us about some of this technology that you're working on. It's a spacesuit design program.
Speaker 4:Not exactly the spacesuits that your audience may be familiar with, because because I think when people think of spacesuits they think of the extravehicular activity suits, the big puffy white gas pressurized suits that we move around in, you know, outside the International Space Station, for example. But we're working on intravehicular activity suits, IVA suits which can be worn, probably periodically they're a bit uncomfortable to wear constantly, but the idea is to have a suit that is loading the body both axially and radially, and loading it such that it mimics the effect of gravity on the tissues and tricks the body, tricks the muscles and bones into thinking that gravity is acting. So we've been looking at from three aspects. We've originally started looking at it from a bone protection point of view, to load up the body to try and prevent the loss of calcium from bones that occurs in space, similar to what happens in older patients with osteoporosis. But then we realized that NASA has almost cracked that problem and we moved on to something a little bit more relevant to them, which was the neurovestibular thing I mentioned before.
Speaker 4:So using the suits to try and provide what we call a proprioceptive input, that means making the bones and joints and muscles think that gravity is acting, so that it gives it a vertical reference. In an environment where there is no vertical reference, there's no up or down in microgravity. So it's to try and trick the body into that feeling that sense that gravity is acting, so that the balance system is maintained, and also adding some resistive elements to movement in the suit so that when you move your limbs you feel like you're moving against gravity. Once again it's the muscle input into the brain saying OK, gravity is acting in a particular direction and it might actually help maintain the reflexes that we need. The main problem with not having those reflexes if we do go eventually to Mars after seven or eight months in microgravity, what happens to astronauts who are completely deconditioned?
Speaker 4:and can't walk a straight line or can't get up and move rapidly and quickly and use their muscles as they normally do. If the spacecraft has to be evacuated quickly, for example, how do they do that? So there's a lot of work going on in that space at NASA at the moment as well, but hopefully this suit can contribute. And finally, the cardiovascular suits, looking at the maintenance of blood pressure on return to Earth. We call those orthostatic intolerance garments. We've come up with a better, more adjustable design for that, because the body changes in microgravity as your muscles, waste and fluids move.
Speaker 4:Suits that are tailored to fit before you go to space aren't going to fit when you come home. So we've come up with a way of adapting the fit to better apply the pressures required and together with that, using some thigh cuff designs, so putting almost like a tourniquet around the cuff to trap some fluid in the lower limbs to prevent that shift of fluid up towards the head that occurs in microgravity. So there's been a number of aspects that we've been looking at and it's the same technology we've been able to apply in those three different ways, and so these suits are made of all different materials.
Speaker 2:They're designed differently, they could be worn at different times, during a space mission, for instance.
Speaker 4:Yes. Well, for the example, with the somatosensory suit, as we call it, the one that gives you that proprioceptive input, you know we were thinking that, and this was where more research is required to figure out what is the appropriate dosing schedule. You know, we wouldn't possibly imagine that astronauts would want to wear this thing 24 7. So our thought would be that as you approach destination, you would increase the, the wear time and frequency to start to redevelop those reflexes that you need once you arrive at your destination. But there's still a lot of work to do on exactly what that dosing would look like.
Speaker 4:One of the funny things that we noticed with these suits is that we thought, oh, wouldn't it be great to wear them while you're asleep, because it just sort of happens automatically and you don't even know, but it's actually. You can't wear them when you're sleeping. You can't sleep Because it puts pressure on the soles of your feet so that the gravity load is sort of acting downwards and the straps around the bottom of your feet that hold it all together makes you feel like you're standing up. And who can sleep standing up?
Speaker 5:unless you're a horse.
Speaker 4:So I mean humans don't really do that very well.
Speaker 2:So how do you think this type of technology, which sounds incredibly complex, could be used here on Earth to help with sort of health conditions, for instance, or health challenges?
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely, and I think earth to help with sort of health conditions, for instance, or health challenges, absolutely, and I think that's one of the most important things about space research. It's it's, you know, taking technology to space to help space fairers, but it's the translational benefits on earth for health care. That's really, I think, our main drive in some ways to get this. You know this technology developed, it's already being used. Compression garments are currently used in athletics. High performance athletes use them for recovery and performance maintenance. But we foresee an application of these technologies in burns patients, in patients with lymphedema, post-surgical recovery, venous thrombosis and embolism prevention and a whole range of different applications, even after plastic surgery. Sometimes there's actually studies showing also that people on the autism spectrum, with disabilities that have some mobility issues, have benefit from compression garment technologies as well. So there's a range of different things that we could look at in the future that might be beneficial to healthcare.
Speaker 2:Should we be doing more to connect our life science or life science sector innovators into Australia's space research sector? Are we doing enough of that?
Speaker 4:Probably no. I mean, I think one of the things I learned and actually I should say, before I mention this, I'd spent a little bit of time working and helping out at the space agency a few years ago when we were putting together a space medicine and life sciences roadmap and one of the things I found doing that and reaching out to researchers and people working in different medical fields around the country. A lot of people were working on projects that were relevant to space and they didn't even know it. You know, I'd hear of people doing things and it wasn't until I actually chatted to them and said well, do you realise that that might be useful technology on the space station? The classic example I use there is actually one of the companies in Adelaide that I talk to makes micro-CT scanners.
Speaker 4:Now, this scanner is the size of a hula hoop, if you know how big. That is right, it's designed to sit in the back of an ambulance or in the back of an RFDS aircraft, but it's the size of a hula hoop and it's a CT scanner. The aim of that was to actually diagnose stroke very quickly, because the sooner you diagnose stroke and administer the treatment, you can, you know, cause or really create a much better benefit for the patient. So I looked at that and I thought that there is no such thing as a CT scanner in space right now. But it's portable, it's small, it's designed for travel and, assuming they sort out the power, weight, volume, radiation issues associated, to have a CT scanner in space, on the moon or on deep space missions would be an incredible advantage. At the moment, the only radiological imaging that could be done on the space station is ultrasound.
Speaker 2:So already there's some potential there for some Australian technology that's right, I mean, that's just one example.
Speaker 4:I would be talking to companies making medical technologies all over the place who suddenly had an aha moment when I said did you realise, have you talked to NASA, have you actually explored the space application of this? And hopefully some of those folks I spoke to went on to do that. I haven't worked there at the agency for some time, but I would hope that some of that technology is being looked at for that application.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. So what's next for human aerospace?
Speaker 4:Well, that's a very good question. We are reliant for the research on grants, as so many people are, and getting grant funding is really difficult at the moment to continue the work that we're doing. So we're exploring those options. But to sort of pivot into a different direction, I've also been looking at developing some courses in aerospace medicine and space medicine, short courses which can be delivered online that Human Aerospace is currently working on to try and in a similar way to you know what you're doing here, with podcasts, providing education to a cohort of people out there. I think this is what we want to do with human aerospace to try and bring aerospace medicine to the industry, to the aerospace industry, to anybody who wants to know about how humans you know human physiology behaves in space or behaves in the aviation environment. We want to try and get that information out there, because there seems to be a hunger for information on that and there aren't many courses available in Australia that provide that.
Speaker 4:That's another direction we're looking at right now, as well as the research side.
Speaker 2:And you know, I've never thought about how a human is really developed specifically to operate on Earth. And then what happens to that, that whole you know biology system up in space?
Speaker 4:Well, exactly right, and this is a really interesting question. When it comes to potential, you know, habitation permanently on other planets, on other worlds. If we, for example, develop, you know, a human outpost on Mars and people start to develop a whole colony there, start to develop a whole colony there we know very little about human reproduction in the space environment to be able to populate another world and carry on the human condition in another way, as it were. But what about children developing in that environment? As you say, we are designed to develop on Earth Embryologically. We need that 1G environment. For example, in the way that the neural tube develops in the embryo and the way that the bones and muscles develop in young children, the epiphyses and so on are reliant upon loading and gravity to fuse. So what are future Mars humans going to look like, is my question. I'll leave that one hanging for everyone to have a think about.
Speaker 2:What a great question. To finish on, it's been an absolute pleasure, gordon, having you on the podcast today.
Speaker 4:To finish on, it's been an absolute pleasure, gordon, having you on the podcast today. Thanks for coming. Great that, carolyn.
Speaker 6:Thanks, it's been a pleasure being here. I'm Tiffany Sharp and I'm the CEO of Cambrian Defence and Space. My focus is on space research and development.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the podcast, Tiffany. I understand that you believe that space is of service to Earth. I just would really love you to unpack that for us.
Speaker 6:A hundred percent. Yes, everything that we do it really has a focus on solving complex problems to benefit humanity. It just so happens that microgravity presents the ability to have a fast track. Look into proliferation of aging tissue cells or proliferation of bacteria. It also is a pristine, sterile environment. The problem with not being able to replicate on Earth what we can do in microgravity is that speeding up process it would have human ethical implications to you know. Expect someone to have their gut dysbiosis put into a simulation and replicate mental health issues, for example, whereas we know with my research in an astronaut twin study that the astronaut that spent 365 days in space had a particular gut species reduction. You can't really replicate that ethically back here on Earth. And everything that we work on in microgravity is looking at predominantly mental health mitigating risk, predominantly mental health mitigating risk. This has applications in the defence force, frontline providers and also in optimal performance. So you could be looking at a Maranpa athlete to Olympians. It all has applications that fast tracks results.
Speaker 2:And you're very interested in the impacts of gravity on neurosciences, on the neural pathways and the brain function Absolutely.
Speaker 6:Again, space is providing insights into basically disease and ailment states that are problems here on Earth. So if you just think basically of astronauts, when they're in the International Space Station, they have intracranial pressure, international Space Station, they have intracranial pressure and what that can help us with if we're researching that in space is TBI traumatic brain injury. So a lot of my work focuses on military and veteran defence personnel, health and the impact of high blast and their work environment, along with sport personnel. Having this snapshot in space is able to give us ideas on how we can mitigate that, which again fast tracks that ability to have an application here on earth.
Speaker 2:And you've recently been on an interesting research journey I guess you'd call it up in the northern parts of the world. Can you tell us about this in Sweden? As I told my daughter at the, year farther Christmas.
Speaker 6:Yes, it was very far north Arctic Circle. There's a Swedish space corporation have a rocket base out there. They've been operating for over 60 years and I was lucky enough to get a pathway to space through DLR, german Aerospace and International Collaboration. And I was looking at specific microbial behaviour in microgravity and it's because of that astronaut twin study that showed that there was a decline in a specific species that impacts anxiety, depression and the immune system From the gut biome. Yeah, so there was a decline from the, the astronaut that was in space. His twins remained on earth. So it was a wonderful snapshot on all areas of gut microbiology, uh, neuroscience and um, tissue cell and biology to see how he's twin, all the tests at baseline and post, uh, 365 days in space compared to the twin on earth and it was that difference in gut dysbiosis, that decline in that particular gut species, that grabbed my attention and that twin study is full of data and you have to really crawl through it and my experience in clinic as a practicing clinical nutritionist.
Speaker 6:I was utilizing a specific yeast to help postpartum women and when I saw this decline in this particular species it was just a hunch. I thought this helped with mental health when I was working in counseling centers Let me just have a look at this and it turned out that it can increase this particular gut species by up to 30% In terms of wellbeing or mental wellbeing, just the species that's responsible for having that anxiety and that depression and that inflammatory response, neuromodulation response.
Speaker 6:So if we could then prove that taking this in an extremely hostile environment for long-term space exploration could mitigate worst case in mood, we would be looking at something that we could utilise on Earth For more than postpartum and I have to admit that I'm a bit of a maverick. Back then it was over 10 years ago. In clinic practice, this product is not well known to be able to have this effect, so researching it in space is going to get the attention that it deserves to be almost used like a prophylactic and obviously mental health.
Speaker 2:It's a massive problem for the human race really in terms of survival, looking at suicide rates increasing and it has a huge impact on human life.
Speaker 6:A hundred percent and we're seeing hospital reports where there's an increase in mental health cases and violence, and also a very underserved member of the community is women in perimenopause and their mental health, and if you can find something that's over the counter, well then it's going to be of benefit to all. And it could be as simple as we have COVID the impact of viruses on the gut health. If we can restore that, we could be looking at a mitigation of worst case.
Speaker 2:That's really exciting to hear about this valuable research that you're undertaking, and do you think that we need more of this type of focused research in terms of the human condition?
Speaker 6:A hundred percent, not just in focus of nutritional neuroscience or mental health, but in terms of current medical research, is looking at everything in 2d. Space is going to provide a 3d opportunity to fast track throughout any research topic you can basically think of. So I think of an acceleration of any illness. We're working with partners on antibiotic resistance, antimicrobial resistance. Space is that perfect environment because of that proliferation of bacteria, time release, a novel agent. All of a sudden, a losing battle here with antibiotic resistance on Earth. We can get a snapshot of what may be able to counter that, and pretty quickly.
Speaker 2:That is really good news, because we know that AMR is the next pandemic Global issue.
Speaker 6:Yeah, yeah, and it's multifaceted. We're looking at agriculture, we're looking at the medical community and we're really excited with our partners. They're outstanding researchers. The novel product they're looking at isn't the traditional antibiotic route, so microgravity provides the perfect environment to be able to demonstrate that capability.
Speaker 2:What would you say to people that are out there in the biotech, medtech space that are keen to find out if their research or their innovations could be applied in a space or microgravity environment?
Speaker 6:Come and talk to us and contact Cambrian Defence and Space MTP Connect. And contact Cambrian Defence and Space MTP Connect. We can definitely lead you into a pathway to show whether we can give you that pun intended giant leap and breakthrough in your research, and a lot of different European companies and pharmaceuticals are already onto this. The usual drug research takes over 10 years. They're able to shorten that time. The financial incentive is there but, more importantly, saving lives in a faster timeframe than what we have been able to do.
Speaker 2:Well, Tiffany, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. It's been a pleasure to talk with you today.
Speaker 6:No, thank you and happy 200.
Speaker 5:So my name is Richard Harvey, I am the Chief Operating Officer for the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space, and my role is really to manage the operations of the centre, manage our partnerships, but also to, I guess, help with the strategic direction of the centre and ensure that our research is having real world impact.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've noticed you're wearing a brooch on your lapel and it's a beautiful red, blue and green sort of leafy design. Tell us about that.
Speaker 5:Really Plants for Space. It's really, I guess, at its core about if, as humans, we're going to go back out into the solar system, to the moon and then off to Mars, then we need to be thinking about how do we support our health as humans, and we think plants are going to be an important part of that, because it's going to be hard to resupply and, um, you know also, you know we're going to think about the health and the psychological well-being. So really what this is about is the blue is the earth, the red is mars and the leaf is kind of like the rocket that's heading from earth to mars, full of plants 100 so it's obviously around um not just food production, but also production of synthesis and and chemicals as well in space.
Speaker 2:Is that right?
Speaker 5:yeah, absolutely so. Plants have a variety of impacts in terms of how they, you know important they are for here on earth. What we're looking at is how you can I push the boundaries of what plants can do to support humans when they're a long way from Earth. And humans need food, we need nutrition. Plants are also important for our psychological well-being. I mean, it's a connection to home. It's, you know, astronauts on the ISS. They, one of their favourite things to do in their leisure time, which they don't have much of, is to plants, because it's it's an important connection to home for them.
Speaker 5:But what we're also looking at doing aside from the food and nutrition aspect, is can you also design plants to produce other essential compounds and materials? Because you imagine you're a long way from home. You might need certain pharmaceuticals, you might need other materials, like plastics, for example, and you're not going to be able to bring everything you're going to need for an entire mission with you. So can you produce them using plants? And so that's what we're doing is designing plants that could then be. You know, you could turn on and off, using something like a change in the wavelength of light, to produce a particular compound on demand when you need it.
Speaker 2:So it's like a material that you're using.
Speaker 5:As a biomanufacturing platform, as a tool for creating things.
Speaker 2:So these plants are not really what we think of as plants. Like you're not taking a maiden hair fern or a eucalyptus sapling, You're actually creating something totally new that we've never seen before.
Speaker 5:Well, we're using existing plants, so we are taking plants that people would be familiar with, some more familiar than others so, for example, we're talking about using it as a biomanufacturing platform. One of our favourite plants is a duckweed, which is basically a very fastowing plant that people might see in sort of stagnant ponds, but it grows really fast, and so if we can genetically manipulate it to produce compounds of interest, then that's something that would be quite useful to do, and we're talking about in a controlled environment, so that also deals with some of the regulatory challenges. But equally, we're also looking at plants like tomatoes. So how can we improve tomatoes for those sorts of environments as well, and strawberries as well?
Speaker 5:One of the things we've got to think about is, if we're trying to be really, really efficient which is something we want to do here on Earth as well with our agriculture then how do we make the best use of the entire plant?
Speaker 5:So we think of something like a strawberry, and you know at the moment, and it's something like a strawberry and you know at the moment, and it's a problem for the strawberry sector is it costs them money to dispose of everything but the strawberry fruit itself. So what we want to do is can we increase the amount of fruit, but then also can we increase the nutritional value in the other plant parts, whether it's the roots, whether it's the leaves, and make use of that? And that's obviously important in space, where we've got to make use of every last molecule we bring with us. But then on earth, if you're in the strawberry industry and you're not then having to deal with the cost of disposing of that material plus you've got a plant now that's more, you know is optimised to grow in more climate resilient conditions, then that's something that they're really excited about too.
Speaker 2:So are there currently plants up in space? Have you got labs up there with plants?
Speaker 5:in them. So we work. You know, our space experiments are often done through our partners. So we've got a close partnership with NASA's crop production team at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida and there's an experiment that we're doing right now. So our team at the University of Western Australia is working with them on some lettuce plants that were grown on the ISS and what they were working out is because water behaves very differently in space, so it is really sticky. So there's some really cool videos in youtube where astronauts grab a water-soaked sponge, they wring it out, but the water just stays as a blob around their hands.
Speaker 5:Um, that's that can be a problem for plants, because it basically drowns them.
Speaker 5:So they respond to that like they're in a flooded paddock and so then you try and withdraw the water.
Speaker 5:So it doesn't do that and you have the opposite impact.
Speaker 5:So what this project um that's in the iss now or just sort of completed in the iss now is trying to use some of the advantages of how water behaves in space to to to look really sort of um, deliberately at water use in plants so better understand how they can make you know how they make use of water, so that we can encourage plants to grow in ways that are more you know, take up water and oxygen more efficiently, but then also design water delivery systems that could be used by agriculture and horticultural companies to sort of deliver as minimal amount of water as possible that the plant can use, and that's something the industry sees as being very valuable. Because, you know South Australia, the last 12 months or so is very low rainfall. There's a lot of, you know, greenhouses that have relied much more on mains water than they normally would, and that's an enormous cost. So there's a lot of important innovations from what's happening in some of this work that we're doing in space that's very relevant to companies like tomato farmers down here on.
Speaker 2:Earth. You mentioned before biomanufacturing, or pharmaceutical properties of plants and how that could be applied to health research and innovation. Can you tell us a bit about that area?
Speaker 5:Yeah, so what we've been doing is developing systems, so basically gene circuits, where you can control the um, you know, expression of genes in a very deliberate way so you can turn things on and off, so you can produce a compound you want when you want it and where you want it in the plant. And so that you know we're trialing a whole bunch of different things in that kind of system, which would mean to say, if you're in a remote part of australia, for example, or mars, and there is, you know, you could have a plant that is designed to produce five different compounds, but using a very specific combination of temperature, wavelength of light, you can very deliberately induce the expression and production of a particular compound, sort of on demand. A very sort of interesting project we're doing right now that's very relevant to health and medical research. So we're working with Professor Chris Sweeney at the South Australian Immunogenomics Cancer Institute here in Adelaide looking at the feverfew plant, which is like a daisy.
Speaker 5:It produces something called parthenolide which makes cancer cells more susceptible to radiotherapy, but it also protects healthy cells from radiation, and so there's some obvious applications for that on Earth in treating cancer. But some of our partners that are looking at sending humans into space say that there's a obvious applications for that on earth and treating cancer. But some of our partners that are looking at sending humans into space say that there's a lot more radiation, particularly as you get further out, and so there's some advantages to that too. So we're working with them to you know, because this plant doesn't grow that well in the field and it can be a bit unpredictable in terms of how it produces this compound. So in a controlled environment, under lights, in a vertical farm, we're optimising the growth conditions of that so that we can improve the yield, create stable product, but then also look to maybe even put it into other, faster growing plant systems to really ramp up the production of that compound.
Speaker 2:And that could be something used to protect space travellers in the future against radiation.
Speaker 5:Yes, absolutely, as well as improve the efficacy of radiotherapy for cancer patients.
Speaker 2:As a molecular biologist, you must be part of a really large team at the ARC of scientists working here in Australia and around the world. How exciting is it to be part of something that's sort of a global innovation program.
Speaker 5:Oh look, it's incredibly exciting. I mean, there's such breadth in terms of what we're doing. So the University of Adelaide is the lead, but there's another four Australian universities, so Melbourne, la Trobe, western Australia and flinders, and we're sort of we're in our second of seven years and so we're building up to about a standing load of about 200 researchers. So that's really exciting, bringing on new, often young, people who are really passionate about what they're doing and excited particularly about the space angle, because we've got a lot of people that haven't come from a background where they've traditionally been working in space, a lot of them sort of in plant science, food science, all those sorts of areas. But then in our wider network of partners across government, academia and industry we have some really cool partners like nasa, axiom, space, vertical farming companies.
Speaker 5:You know universities like uc, berkeley, uc, davis, cambridge, um, and and sort of government agencies here in Australia as well, but also sort of focus a lot more on the sort of plant science side of things. But we also have people who are working in sort of chemical engineering, in psychology. So how do people respond to new foods? Are they going to eat our strawberries if we change them? What are the sensory kind of considerations in terms of how people perceive foods, and then even um space law. So, looking at some of the regulatory um aspects, so these are things that have not been done before. So there are a lot of frameworks that don't really even exist in terms of how you you know you deal with some of these issues and, like ethical issues, around gene transformation and things like that.
Speaker 5:Yeah, the ethics of all of that is really important. So it's not just a case of can we do it, but what should we do?
Speaker 2:And what's the impact of what we do?
Speaker 5:if we do it Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And so your dream for the ARC? What would it be if you had one thing that you hope comes true from the research that you're working on?
Speaker 5:Oh look, I mean I'd hate to speak for 200 people that we'll have on the centre, but I think that what I would hope you know to see is some new plant varieties that NASA are looking to take or are considering at least taking into space as part of an actual mission. So we'll obviously have experiments with them, but looking further than just experiments, something that's actually useful, but then also being able to stand next to a tomato farmer in the Adelaide Plains and talking about how the work that we have done is helping improve the sustainability of their business.
Speaker 2:Well, we're going to be watching with interest and thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's been fantastic.
Speaker 5:Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 2:It's a pleasure. This podcast was recorded in Adelaide for MTP Connect's South Australian Insight Series event what's your Place in Space, to celebrate Australian Space Week. For this 200th episode, here is a shout out to all of the fantastic MTP Connect team who have helped to make the series such a success To our CEO, stuart Dignam, who created this podcast back in 2019, and our former team member, shannon Osren, who contributed to the show. Thanks also to our very talented editor and producer, natalie vella, for her dedication to every episode. And as the host of the podcast, it's my absolute pleasure to bring you australian stories of innovation from the life sciences sector 65 000 downloads so far and many more to come. 5,000 downloads so far and many more to come. You've been listening to the MTP Connect podcast. This podcast is produced on the lands of the Wurundjeri people here in Narm, melbourne. Thanks for listening to the show. If you love what you heard, share our podcast and follow us for more Until next time.
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