CiMUS "takes off" on the last flight of Antares
On Tuesday, the Cygnus cargo spacecraft aboard the Antares rocket successfully took off for the International Space Station (ISS) from the Virginia Spaceport Authority's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport. The Cygnus NG-19 module departed for the ISS, loaded with supplies and experimental material, including a small 15x8x8 cm metal box containing the ZePrion experiment, the result of a collaboration between SpacePharma and the universities of Trento and Milano-Bicocca, the Italian National Research Centre, the CJDF Foundation of Israel and CiMUS of USC.
The international team, including CiMUS researcher Jesús Requena, travelled to Norfolk, Virginia, to make the final preparations in situ before handing over the experimental material to NASA technicians for loading.
The ISS astronauts will receive the box, which will be placed it in its docking port and remotely controlled from Terra by NASA and SpacePharma technicians. Inside, a microfluidic system will facilitate the experiment, which will consist of an attempt to obtain, under microgravity conditions, crystals and aggregates of an intermediate and unstable form of the prion protein, PrP, bound to a molecule developed by an experimental algorithm.
This is a risky bet, but one that could open up new perspectives in drug research. "Until now, all drugs targeting proteins involved in diseases bind to the mature, stable form of the protein in question. The technology that ZePrion will explore, on the other hand, seeks to act on proteins early, before their folding is complete" explains CiMUS researcher Jesús Requena. In several weeks' time, a return trip from the ISS will bring the box back to Earth so that the results of the experiment can be analysed.
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