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SELECTBIO Conferences The Space Summit 2019

Siobhan Malany's Biography



Siobhan Malany, Associate Professor, University of Florida and Founder, Micro-gRx

Dr. Malany is a drug discovery pharmacologist and space researcher. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Florida. She holds six pending and issued patents, one of which was licensed to AlloRock to develop guanylyl cyclase A positive allosteric modulators as therapeutics for resistant hypertension. She has sent four payloads to the ISS since 2014 and is investigating effects of microgravity on human muscle biology using functional devices called “tissue chips”as a micro-scale model of musculoskeletal disease. She is part of the Central Florida Cluster Initiative to expand economic opportunities in the region. Dr. Malany holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Iowa and completed postdoctoral training in pharmacology at the University of San Diego and was an Alexander von Humboldt fellow at the Max Plank Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany. She started her pharmacology career in the biotechnology industry in San Diego before moving to Florida in 2011 to lead a chemical biology drug discovery team at the Sanford Burnham Chemical Genomics Center in Orlando. There, a trip to see the last Endeavor launch sparked an interest in space research.

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Development of a Tissue Chip to Electrically Stimulate Human Muscle Myocytes in Microgravity to Study Muscle Wasting on Earth and in Space

Tuesday, 15 October 2019 at 14:15

Add to Calendar ▼2019-10-15 14:15:002019-10-15 15:15:00Europe/LondonDevelopment of a Tissue Chip to Electrically Stimulate Human Muscle Myocytes in Microgravity to Study Muscle Wasting on Earth and in SpaceThe Space Summit 2019 in Coronado Island, CaliforniaCoronado Island, CaliforniaSELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com

The molecular basis of age-related muscle atrophy (Sarcopenia) is largely unknown in part because molecular changes accumulate in skeletal muscle over many years; Currently there are no approved therapeutics for Sarcopenia. We are interested in investigating physiological changes in primary muscle myocytes on the molecular and cellular induced in microgravity that could be exploited for the study of accelerated intrinsic muscle cell dysfunction mimicking age-related muscle weakness. We are planning for a fall 2020 launch to the ISS and are constructing microtissues of cells isolated from young, athletic and old, sedentary adults to be exposed to the environment of microgravity and subjected to an electrical stimulation regime as a more physiologically relevant model of muscle cell function. We plan to compare differential expressed atrogenes, fiber size and contraction rate between the cohorts in microgravity and ground controls. We will discuss development of the tissue chip and lessons learned from our first lab-on-chip experiment sent to the ISS in November 2018.


Add to Calendar ▼2019-10-14 00:00:002019-10-15 00:00:00Europe/LondonThe Space Summit 2019The Space Summit 2019 in Coronado Island, CaliforniaCoronado Island, CaliforniaSELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com