Abstract

Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine in Space: How the ISS National Lab is Your Gateway to Translational Innovation

Michael Roberts, Deputy Chief Scientist, International Space Station National Lab

The International Space Station is one of humankind’s greatest technical achievements—orbiting some 400 km above our planet and traveling at over 28,000 kilometers per hour. But even more importantly, the ISS has continuously enabled a human presence in space where astronauts have lived, worked, and conducted cutting edge R&D for 19 years. Aside from housing astronauts and hosting research facilities that push the boundaries of technology and innovation, the space station and the ISS National Lab have also been home to over 2,500 science experiments that leverage the unique space environment to benefit life on Earth and explorers traveling off of Earth. The ISS National Lab is available to a myriad of government, academic, and commercial researchers interested in looking at their science questions through a new lens. Among the new research programs in microgravity are multiple investigations in stem cells, organoids, organs on chips, regenerative medicine, tissue engineering, and 3D bioprinting that are already accelerating the pace of discovery to push us beyond the limits of our imagination to address health problems here on Earth.