Barbara E. Selby
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.                                        
October 16, 1991
(Phone:  703/557-5609)
 
Barbara A. Hale
Center for Cell Research, Penn. State U., State College
(Phone:  814/865-2407)
 
RELEASE:  91-172
 
NASA CCDS INTRODUCES NEW SPACE-BASED PROCESSING EFFORT

   Pennsylvania State University's Center for Cell Research 
(CCR), State College, a NASA Center for the Commercial 
Development of Space, has begun a new space program to enable 
American industry to enhance the purification and processing 
of cells, subcelluar particles, proteins, growth factors and 
other biological products. 

   The new program --  U.S. Commercial Electrophoresis Program 
in Space (USCEPS) -- is the first to couple industry access to 
space-based systems with ground-based mathematical modeling 
services.  The modeling service will enable industrial clients 
to evaluate, prior to flight, how much improvement the 
microgravity environment of space will produce. 

   Electrophoresis is a processing technique widely used on 
Earth.  It separates desired biological material from a 
mixture on the basis of electrical charge.  During flights 
aboard the Space Shuttle in the 1980s, the McDonnell Douglas 
Corp. was able to separate up to 718 times more material and 
to reach purity levels four times higher than ground units. 

   The USCEPS builds on Penn State expertise and a decade of 
intensive process development and flight experimentation 
conducted by McDonnell Douglas, which is participating in this 
effort as a subcontractor.  

   Penn State participants include Dr. W.C. Hymer, Director of 
the CCR, who performed the first pituitary cell 
electrophoretic separation in microgravity in 1983; Dr. J. 
Lawrence Duda, professor and head of the Department of 
Chemical Engineering, a specialist in mathematical modeling 
and chemical processing; Dr. Ali Borhan, assistant professor 
of chemical engineering, a specialist in fluid dynamics; and 
Dr. Alfred Carlson, assistant professor of chemical 
engineering, a specialist in bioprocessing.  
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   Others include Dr. Wayne Lanham and David Richman of 
McDonnell Douglas and Alan Rose of Commercial Payloads, Inc.  
Lanham, Richman and Rose were members of the original 
McDonnell Douglas team. 

   The USCEPS team will begin work on a new engineering 
concept in November and expects to have a unit built, 
flight-qualified and ready for service aboard a SPACEHAB 
Shuttle flight in 1994.  Units will be customized to meet 
industry demand. 

   New bioseparation and bioprocessing techniques are a major 
need in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries where 
innovative genetic engineering approaches have produced unique 
separation and processing problems.  Every new biotechnology 
product must be removed or separated from the materials in 
which and from which it was produced.  Each new product 
represents a new production processing problem that must be 
solved before it can go to market. 

   For example, inclusion bodies, tiny packets of product that 
form within the genetically engineered bacteria used in 
manufacturing, represent one class of biotechnology processing 
problems.  Carlson estimates that 80 percent of products 
currently produced via genetically engineered cells -- 
everything from insulin to milk coagulating agents -- form 
first as inclusion bodies.  Ten years ago inclusion bodies 
were of limited interest.  Today, they represent a whole new 
field that seems ideally suited to free-flow electrophoresis, 
he said. 

   Any company that recognizes the potential of commercial 
space activities is welcome to approach the center about a 
possible collaboration on space- based separations, said 
Hymer. 

   The Center for Cell Research is one of three biologically 
focused CCDSs.  It is the only center to offer a space-based 
bioprocessing service.  

                            -end-