North Yorkshire firm goes out of this world with NASA study
NASA recently received assistance from a York-based diagnostics company in understanding the impacts of spaceflight on the immune systems of its astronauts.
Abingdon Health, whose manufacturing facility is based on the National Agri-Food Innovation Campus (NAFIC) at Sand Hutton, developed a technology which was used during a study of 23 astronauts on the International Space Station.
The 12-month study examined the effect spaceflight has on the human body’s B-cells, which help fight infection. The risk of reduced immune function during extended space missions is a key issue for NASA, which aims to have manned flights to Mars within the next 20 years.
The research – conducted by the University of Bath, Louisiana State University and the University of Houston – measured free light chains (FLCs) in the astronauts’ plasma and saliva before, during and after their space missions.
FLC proteins are important to scientists studying spaceflight because they provide a near ‘real-time’ indicator of B-cell function.
The study used Abingdon Health’s Seralite-FLC ELISA product, which measures kappa and lambda free light chain proteins in bodily fluids.
Preliminary findings suggest the astronauts’ plasma cells are not affected by long periods in space at zero gravity, meaning the risk of infection does not increase.
David Pritchard, chief technology officer at Abingdon Health, said: “Dr Guillaume Spielmann, the lead in the study, believes that the obvious next step will be to study how the immune function reacts to even longer periods in space – perhaps over several years – so that NASA and other space exploration organisations can be confident astronauts’ immune systems won’t be compromised during prolonged periods in space.”
Abingdon Health is a diagnostics company focused on developing, manufacturing and commercialising lateral flow immunoassay tests and readers for a range of sectors.
The company moved to NAFIC in 2012, following the acquisition of government spin-out company Forsite Diagnostics Ltd. In the past year it has further expanded its manufacturing footprint on the campus.
