Enrichment of space-grown plants with medicinal compounds

Lead Researcher: Professor Matthew Gilliham; Professor Volker Hessel; Associate Professor Jenny Mortimer

(Adelaide-Nottingham Joint PhD)

In space production, plant biotechnology may become an accepted avenue for pharmaceutical development.

Researchers have engineered plants to grow biomolecules that can be made into therapeutics, including vaccines and monoclonal antibodies. These new technologies hold the promise of more readily bringing treatments and providing rapid responses to future pandemics. The PhD will need expertise in plant biology, and investigate such biotechnological production of pharmaceuticals in plants we consider to be relevant for space-based plant growth. A relevant point will be to develop a holistic processing concept, that includes purification and isolation of the pharmaceutical molecules from the plant mass (e.g. by extraction), and ways of compounding them into a pharmaceutical finished product, that is cosmic-ray stable. In a last step, the growth of the pharmaceutical-metabolising plants shall be fertilised with our circular concept of P-nutrition deliver and recovery.