The Bioastronautical Systems Development Company (BSDC) proposes to develop habitat technologies for conducting long-term commercial research with mice in microgravity. Our research addresses solicitation section B4.02 Space Commercialization for the design/development of microgravity payloads for space station applications that lead to commercial products or services. In partnership with BioServe Space Technologies, we ultimately seek to offer an efficient, long-duration, EXPRESS-rackcompatible microgravity mouse habitat that will address BioServe?s growing demands from commercial affiliates expressing an interest in conducting research with mice aboard the International Space Station. Our focus on mice stems from the facts that pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies perform most pre-clinical examinations (80%) with mice, transgenic laboratory animals are nearly exclusively available in mice, and mice require fewer ISS resources (crew time, mass, volume, etc.) than rats. However, odors from mouse urine are considerably more odiferous than the urine from rats, the traditional animal used in microgravity biology studies. Therefore, this research addresses odor control and sanitation technologies for mouse waste, specifically the examination of various adsorption materials (e.g. carbon, zeolite, and bedding), separating humidity and odor control, and efficacy of a catalytic scrubber. POTENTIAL COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS The primary commercial application of this hardware is to enable the marketing of microgravity research and development to biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. For example, our subcontractor, BioServe has a strong track record of promoting spaceflight pre-clinical research on the Space Shuttle with three flight investigations sponsored by Chiron Corp. (STS-60, 63 and 77) and a recently completed spaceflight investigation sponsored by Amgen Inc. (STS-108). Amgen has expressed a strong interest in flying mice on the Space Station. They are particularly interested in flying skeletally aged mice for 4-6 weeks to explore long-duration spaceflight as a model for Type II (senile) osteoporosis (as described in Part 5: Related R/R&D). If the described combination of age related bone loss in C57BL/6J mice and spaceflight were to become a validating step before proceeding to human clinical trials for senile osteoporosis, it would be worth millions of dollars to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry.
