Health

Xintiandi for developing cutting-edge drugs -- Prospect of new business forms of space economy ③

2022-07-27   

With the development of space technology and biotechnology, space biopharmaceutical is getting more and more attention and application. In the white paper "China's aerospace in 2021", space biopharmaceutical is listed as one of the new space economic formats that need to be cultivated and developed. It not only has unique advantages in scientific research, but also contains huge economic value. It has become the frontier field of the development of global space science and technology. Biopharmaceutical refers to the production of natural active substances for medicine with organisms as raw materials or with the help of biological processes. Studies have found that many substances that make up the human body are also good drugs. For example, the well-known insulin and various antibodies belong to protein drugs, in addition to nucleic acids, vitamins, peptides and other biological drugs. In 2020, the global pharmaceutical market was about US $1.3 trillion, of which biological agents and drugs exceeded US $330billion. In 2021, the global sales of the world's top ten biotech drugs reached US $71.1 billion. Biopharmaceutical is becoming a hot branch of the pharmaceutical industry because of its micro, efficient, intelligent and other advantages. So what's the difference between space Biopharmaceutics? The development of intelligent and efficient biomass drugs is inseparable from the insight into the molecular structure and interaction principle of biomaterials. However, biological materials such as proteins have large molecular weight, complex structure, easy denaturation and deactivation of molecules, coupled with the interference of external environmental gravity or buoyancy, the purification process has become particularly difficult, and the mode of molecular interaction in vitro solution is far from the actual situation in vivo. Taking insulin molecule as an example, it contains 784 atoms, while water molecule has only 3 atoms, which shows the complexity of biomaterials. In the space environment, the characteristics of weightlessness, space radiation and circadian rhythm are creating a special environment for people to recognize things. In space, because the posture and distribution of biological macromolecules are no longer affected by buoyancy convection and gravity sedimentation, biological macromolecules can be more stretched and fully combined. In the weightless environment, biomolecules "congener", impurities can be more fully filtered to form high-quality crystals with higher purity and more orderly arrangement. The combination mode of molecules in space may also produce new crystals different from those on the ground, which is conducive to the development of new drugs. Nano sized uniform crystals can also be made into oral capsules to prevent people from suffering from injection. Space radiation is generally believed to damage biological DNA. However, from another point of view, DNA changes are sometimes equivalent to the emergence of new species, often with new characteristics and new capabilities. Therefore, for the system of preparing drugs with the help of microorganisms, animal and plant cells, tissues or individuals, the use of space radiation to induce the damage or mutation of specific genes may lead to a more robust biological production system, thereby improving drug production, and even obtaining candidate drugs that are difficult to prepare on the ground. Space biopharmaceutical technology is also indispensable for space life. Long term radiation will accelerate drug failure. Therefore, screening a radiation resistant production system for human space activities, developing reliable production processes and equipment, and preparing drugs on real-time demand have become another new direction of space biopharmaceutics. At present, preliminary research results of space biopharmaceuticals have been achieved in the international space station. Chinese researchers have carried out carrying experiments of pharmaceutical microbial breeding on Shenzhou VII, and protein crystallization experiments on Shenzhou III and Shenzhou VIII. Some biopharmaceutical companies have made breakthroughs in the treatment of osteoporosis and breast cancer through treatment exploration and drug research and development. In the future, the achievements and economic and social benefits of space Biopharmaceutics are expected. (outlook new era)

Edit:sishi Responsible editor:xingyong

Source:http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrb/html/

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