Encapsulate, a biotech startup, is leveraging the unique microgravity environment onboard the International Space Station (ISS) using real patient tumours to predict how they’ll respond to treatment before a single dose is given.
Featured in the latest issue of Upward, the official magazine of the ISS National Laboratory, Encapsulate’s tumour-on-a-chip system grows patient biopsy samples into miniature tumours that are tested with different drugs in space.
“Technically, it’s not even a prediction now,” said CEO and co-founder Armin Rad in the article.
“It’s an observation of what would work the best on the tumour.”
Encapsulate recently secured a $3.63m grant from NASA’s In Space Production Applications (InSPA) program and a $1.25m Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award from the U.S. National Science Foundation. These funds will accelerate the further development and clinical validation of the tumour-on-a-chip system in collaboration with top cancer centres. Encapsulate also launched a larger clinical study in collaboration with UConn Health, Moffitt Cancer Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and other institutions. The study will profile 100 to 200 patients with colorectal and pancreatic cancers using Encapsulate’s system.
Encapsulate’s first experiments launched on SpaceX’s 30th commercial resupply mission, contracted by NASA. An autonomous CubeLab, developed in collaboration with ISS National Lab Commercial Service Provider Space Tango, monitored tumour responses in microgravity.
“The astronauts didn’t need to touch anything,” Rad said in Upward.
“Honestly, they just plugged it in like a coffee machine.”
In space, the absence of gravity allows cloned tumors to grow in more complex 3D shapes that more accurately mimic their development in the human body than traditional laboratory models. Some tumours with specific mutations reacted to chemotherapy drugs in space but not on Earth, revealing hidden behaviours.
Beyond drug response, microgravity exposed early tumour cell movement patterns linked to metastasis. In Upward, Joel Levine, director of UConn Health’s Colon Cancer Prevention Program and a research collaborator, said: “If I told you that you could predict that event from the day of the biopsy, you would have thought that’s counterculture. But maybe we’ve been watching cancer unfold too late in the story.”
Encapsulate’s approach aims to end the guesswork in cancer treatment by providing precision diagnostics for personalized care.
“What you get out of the test of that tumour is really analogous to this being tested in you,” Levine said.
Jim Cornall is editor of Deeptech Digest and publisher at Ayr Coastal Media. He is an award-winning writer, editor, photographer, broadcaster, designer and author. Contact Jim here.
