Technology Transfer

Space Crystals Provide Hope for Diabetes

DIABETIC PATIENTS MAY SOMEDAY REDUCE their insulin injections and lead more normal lives because of new insights gained through innovative space research in which the largest insulin crystals ever studied were grown on the Space Shuttle. The results from a 1994 insulin crystal growth experiment in space are leading to a new understanding of diabetes, a hormone deficiency disease.

These results have the potential to significantly reduce expensive treatments; the treatment of diabetes accounts for one-seventh of the nation's health care costs. Sixteen million Americans suffer from hormone deficiency diseases, such as diabetes, hepatic failure, hemophilia, Parkinson's disease and Huntington disease.

"The space-grown insulin crystals have provided us new, never-before-seen information," said Dr. G. David Smith, a scientist at Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute in Buffalo, New York. "As a result, we now have a much more detailed picture of insulin."

Because of the increase in crystal size, Smith's team is able to study in more detail the delicate balance of the insulin molecule. Natural insulin molecules hold together and gradually release into the human body. With some of the new and unexpected findings, researchers may be able to improve how insulin is released from its inactive-stored state to its active state. This could greatly improve the quality of life of people on insulin therapy by cutting down on the number of injections they have to take.

Hauptman-Woodward is partnering with the Center for Macromolecular Crystallography (CMC), a NASA Commercial Space Center in Birmingham, Alabama, managed by the Space Product Development Office within the Microgravity Research Program Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. "We are doing crystal growth experiments in the near weightlessness of space that really tell the story of how insulin works and give us clues of how, in the long run, to defeat diabetes," said Dr. Marianna M. Long, Associate Director of CMC, which is located at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Insulin regulates the human body's blood sugar levels. In people with diabetes, insulin is not produced in sufficient quantity, nor regulated properly. This metabolic disorder impairs the body's ability to use digested food for growth and energy.

As with many chemicals in the body, the three-dimensional structure of insulin is extremely complex. The intricate, blueprint-like arrangement of atoms within the insulin molecule determines how well the hormone interacts within the body. When grown in an Earth-gravity environment, insulin crystals do not grow as large or as ordered as researchers desire, obscuring the blueprint of the insulin molecules.

The crystals are grown in space because the absence of gravity allows large and perfect crystalline structures to form. Structure-based drug design shortens development time over the classic trial-and-error method of drug testing. This structural information is a powerful research tool for drug design in the pharmaceutical, chemical and biotechnology industries.

For more information, contact Steve Lambing at the Marshall Space Flight Center.
Call: 256/544-2277, Fax: 256/544-8369, E-mail: Steven.J.Lambing@msfc.nasa.gov Please mention you read about it in Innovation.

(Left)
The largest insulin crystals ever studied and grown in space have provided new, never-before-seen information to help treat diabetes.

(Right)
Space-grown insulin crystals reveal the blueprint of the insulin molecules normally obscured if grown in an Earth-gravity environment.