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SELECTBIO Conferences The Space Summit 2022

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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Monitoring Real-Time Biomechanics in a Muscle-on-Chip on SpaceX-25

Tuesday, 8 November 2022 at 16:10

Add to Calendar ▼2022-11-08 16:10:002022-11-08 17:10:00Europe/LondonMonitoring Real-Time Biomechanics in a Muscle-on-Chip on SpaceX-25The Space Summit 2022 in Boston, USABoston, USASELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com

Through the Tissue Chips in Space program funded by the National Institutes of Health and NASA, we seek to leverage the unique environment of microgravity on the ISS to correlate changes in human skeletal muscle biology, particularly in genomics and biomechanics, with accelerated muscle dysfunction. Muscle degradation leads to a dramatic decline in mobility in an increasing aging population, yet age-related muscle atrophy or sarcopenia remains without effective therapeutic options, largely because molecular changes accumulate over decades. 3D Tissue chips have the potential to advance screening of drugs to counteract pathologies in vitro with clinically relevant physiology and they are adaptable for use in autonomous laboratories for space flight. In this work, we describe the characterization and advancements made in the development of a human muscle-on-chip that enables functional monitoring of donor-derived myobundles with electrical stimulation with the main goals to identify effective exercise mimicking regimes, evaluate therapeutic compounds and dietary supplements to benefit muscle health and establish a proof-of-concept technology platform in Lower Earth Orbit (LEO) for therapeutic development to treat the elderly, the athlete and the astronaut.


Add to Calendar ▼2022-11-07 00:00:002022-11-08 00:00:00Europe/LondonThe Space Summit 2022The Space Summit 2022 in Boston, USABoston, USASELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com