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More than a hundred thousand people are on a waiting
list right now for an organ transplant, and

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unfortunately that usually a one-to-one process.

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You get a organ when somebody else loses an
organ.

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What if one day you could print your own organ,
maybe from your own cells?

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Our goal is is that we're going to print a
tissue that's more than a centimeter thick

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And you think a centimeter, that's not really
that impressive.

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Well, that's more than 10 times what we can
print on the ground, and we think that microgravity

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is going to be the key.

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This big L is actually the bioprinter, so
this is the BFF.

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This actually legacy hardware.

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This is our ADSEP, or Advanced Space Experiment
Processor.

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That's where we will put the tissue after
it's printed.

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Basically, it's the maturation process.

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It's what turns a construct into a tissue
because we're just putting building blocks

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down and then can step back and let biology
do it biology does.

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As smart as we think we are biology will always
be smarter.

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We're not just bringing back tissue.

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We're bringing back tissue that's cardiac
tissue and it's going to beat just like a

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heart.

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That is cool as anything.

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So what happens if we build the next thing,
and the next thing and the next thing eventually

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yeah, we're going to print a heart.

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That's really where we're going.

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Biorock is an experiment to study how microbes,
bacteria interact with rocks in microgravity

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and simulated Martian gravity.

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And you might think why would we be interested
in what microbes do in rocks?

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Well microbes on the Earth are used to break
down rocks to release economically important

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elements.

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About 60% of the world's copper and gold is
today extracted in Biomining.

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So the long-term future exploration of the
Moon and Mars we might want to use microbes

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to help us break down rocks to do industry.

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That's a very long-term view in the shorter
term view microbes break down rocks, turn

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them into soils.

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If we want to transform our lunar and Martian
basalt into material that is more useful for

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agriculture for growing crops rather than
having to take things with us we might use

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bacteria to do that.

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And then finally, of course we could use extraterrestrial
materials to supply nutrients and life support

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systems.

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Why ship nutrients to the moon and Mars with
all that mass and energy cost when you can

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just shovel in some lunar and Martian regolith
into your life support system and provide

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the nutrients from that.

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Five to ten percent of fractures will not
heal without extra help or intervention by

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the orthopedic surgeon.

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And what they use is a drug called bone morphogenetic
protein and this helps to heal the bone.

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However, there is a risk of developing cancer
with the use of these proteins.

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So identifying new bone-healing agents is
really important and that's what we're testing

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here.

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So you may say well, why do we need to do
that in spaceflight?

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Why can't we just do it here on Earth?

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Animals will walk immediately after you do
a bone surgery.

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Humans, we don't.

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We use crutches, we may be bedridden, but
in spaceflight the animals can't see that

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gravity and bone healing is helped when you
walk, when you bear weight.

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And the drugs that we currently have work
through that mechanism the drug we have patented

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does not, and so we think it will be better
for bone healing and spaceflight if we go

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to Mars and have a fracture or here on Earth
for the military personnel, for bad auto accidents

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and even for people with osteoporosis that
have a fracture and it has impaired healing.

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This video here is showing the bioculture
where the bioreactors will be residing and

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this has two compartments.

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One of them is a warm compartment at 37 degrees
that's where the cells will grow and then

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the second compartment next to it is a cold
compartment and that's where all the nutrients

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and the media will be in.

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And what happens is that crew member will
inject the media at certain time points to

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feed these cells and then add the fixative
at the end.

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The cells will come in back to the Earth and
on Earth what we're going to do is isolate

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RNA and DNA and proteins from these cells
and do whole genome analysis whole proteome

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and how metabolome analysis and this will
help us understand the whole picture.

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We are taking advantage of a groundbreaking
discovery that was made the almost a decade

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ago, which is the induced pluripotent stem
cell technologies.

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So basically what it means is that we are
now able to make in a laboratory stem cells

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starting from a little fill a little drop
of blood from any of us or a little tiny piece

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of skin and we convert these cells into what
we call induced pluripotent stem cells.

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We use them to generate any cell type that
we want.

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So in our case that we're studying neurodegenerative
diseases, we really want to make the brain

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cells and study them.

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Well have a cell line from a Parkinson's patient
and also an age-matched control and these

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will be making dopaminergic neurons and these
are the neurons that are lost in Parkinson's

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disease.

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And we will also have a cell line from a multiple
sclerosis patient and these will be made into

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cortical neurons and microglia will be added
to those and also in age-matched control.

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So we're interested to see what happens in
space.

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Can we get more mature maturation of these
cells?

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Can we make a better model for Parkinson's
Disease and multiple sclerosis?

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So I think it has a lot of implications for
the health of brain cells of astronauts who

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spend a lot of time in space, and we're also
hoping to learn more about these two diseases