Joe Chappell: What plants have is they have a genetic reservoir that they have at their
disposal that they can use at different stages in this geological time frame to help them
content with the conditions that they're faced with.
What we are trying to explore by putting plants into space, is putting them into a different
environment such that they will now uncover some of that genetic potential that is bottled
up in them already.
I have known Kris Kimel for a long time.
And I appreciate that he's a terrific innovator in terms of trying to coach and encourage
scientists from the University of Kentucky and elsewhere to explore things in a different way.
Kris Kimel: Previously, I was president of the Kentucky Science Technology Corporation
which is a non-profit company, it’s job is to kind of push the envelope in Kentucky
in the areas that’s in technology and innovation.
So I had known Joe from my previous work.
Joe Chappell: When they launched Space Tango a few years ago, it was natural, because I'm
an experimentalist, to suggest to Kris and Twyman, oh, maybe we can put some plants in
space and do some experiments looking at plants that have the potential to bring new therapeutics
back to earth and help us explore those.
Kris Kimel: We fundamentally believe that today and in the future there will be discoveries,
there will be developments, there will be things manufactured in space with the materials,
medical devices, biological products etc., that will open up complete new areas of understanding
and ultimately save lives on earth.
The facility we’re in right now which is Space Tango headquarters, which is where everything
is developed and designed and ultimately built.
We also have just behind me a full mission operation center and that center offers us
24-hour data, audio and visual access to the astronauts.
And so, that when any of our experiments are being manipulated or worked on on the space
station, our engineers our staff are on the console communicating directly visually and
audio with the astronauts.
A unique opportunity not only for the people who work here, but for the universities and for the students.
We have a lot of students who come through here as well because they can do things here
that they cannot do in most places in the world.
Gentry Barnett Dr. Chappell contacted us to do some basically exploratory research with
some of his plants that they are using in the lab and through that process I met Chase
and I asked him to kind of come on and help us as a contractor to basically look into
more of that biological side
Chase Kempinski: I work as plant physiologist consultant to the private enterprise Space
Tango, and helping them optimize growth parameters, preparing biological materials for things
that are going to go to the International Space Station.
So really, optimizing the media concentrations of the various hormones, salts, and things
that plants require.
Sort of just optimizing the physical parameters the amount of media used, the types of tubes
or boxes that are used.
Sterilizing the seeds so that you don't get any other, unwanted, contamination when they're
grown in that closed environment.
Gentry Barnet: There's some things that you can test on earth and you can't test on earth.
For example, one of the ones that was very challenging for me that we just sent up and
it was one of the ones that we worked on with Dr. Chappell's lab specifically with Chase,
is the growth of barley.
What the principal investigator on the project wanted to do is to fix the barley while in
space, but there are very different fluid dynamics in microgravity.
We had to battle those as well as the pressurization issues within the test tubes themselves.
Chase Kempinski: The other plants the Chappell lab is using are Madagascar Periwinkle, or Catharanthus.
And so that's important because it produces a couple compounds that are important anti-cancer drugs.
But it produces them in really low amounts.
So, moving them into space and trying to illicit, perhaps, new changes to chemistry could identify
pathways that allow you to make more of those compounds, or even, you know, specially, chemically
tweaked ones that might even be better drugs.
Gentry Barnett: There are actually quite a few obstacles to get a payload like a plant
growth project in space, one being the actual space restrictions themselves.
We fly these projects in a cube lab which is about the size of a tissue box.
We take those down to Cape Canaveral and turn those over to NASA about three to five days
before the launch.
They generally go up on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and that takes off, takes about two
days to get to the space station and docking, and then within about 24 to 48 hours, the
astronauts physically take the payload and install it into our Tango lab facility.
It stays there for about 28 to 30 days.
Joe Chappell: Now, the next real challenge for us is to be able to bring those plants
back to earth and now look at them for their chemistry.
We've now got to have very incisive insight into the chemistry; the molecules
of life in those plants.
And try to tease out what are the unique ones that might have additional applications.
Might be for a chemotherapeutic agent, anti-microbial or anti-fungal reagent, or it might have something
to do with a neurological condition.
Chase Kempinski: I think there's just tons of opportunities for both self intellectual
growth, and then also being able to take what you've learned and apply it to bigger problems, right.
And I think we have a great community for being able to do that.
Kris Kimel We are doing work right now not in the future, but right now in pharmaceuticals
in cancer, in Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, cystic fibrosis etc.
These are very, very complex difficult issues in diseases and systems.
It's going to require again a lot of knowledge and much of that knowledge resides within universities.
Joe Chappell: I don't think I would have ever imagined this a few years ago, without that
interaction with Kris Kimel and Twyman.
They have made it possible for me to bounce ideas off of them.
And they bounce ideas off of me.
And we come from different walks of life.
So, it's incredibly stimulating and innovative.
Often times, we use a technical term; multidisciplinary.
Well, that's a fancy way to say that we have different shoes we walk in.
And we bring that to the situation, the problem, the challenge.
And I think that's how we're going to face many of the challenges that we face
in our near future.
In terms of medicine, certainly.
We know that we need to be filling the pipeline of drug development, and we need some new
ways to approach that.