NASA Pharmacotherapeutics Laboratory

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, is an American agency to which we owe much of the knowledge that we have now about the Solar System, the planets, the Milky Way, and so on. Astronauts are very well prepared individuals, but are not immune to health upheavals. After all, some people get carsick just from a short drive, so we can only imagine what it must feel like to go beyond the Earth's orbit. As a matter of fact, space flight often involves many disturbances such as space motion sickness, headache, sleeplessness, backache, nasal congestion, and several other chronic and acute conditions.

This is why NASA has a Pharmacotherapeutics Laboratory, a division that will probably not read about on pharmacy reviews, but then again, its responsibilities go beyond prescribing drugs to treat the illnesses listed above. Actually, extended duration space habitation, and expeditions to the Moon and Mars means that pharmaceuticals will also be used to increase cardiovascular conditioning, immune response and musculoskeletal integrity. This laboratory works closely with the Space Medicine and Health Care Systems Office to meet the medical requirements of the Shuttle, International Space Station, and space exploration programs, via clinical pharmacy services, research of pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, therapeutic drug evaluation, specialized therapeutic assessment for spaceflight related pathophysiology, novel dosage form development, and pharmaceutical stability assessment.

Among the capabilities of the laboratory are implementation of FDA sponsored phase I to III clinical trials, research of clinical pharmacotherapeutics, construction and maintenance of an international drug equivalency database for the space program, maintenance of medications database for Shuttle, International Space Station and future Moon and Mars expeditions, delivery of novel drugs and methods and technologies monitoring, and others. There are several projects currently in progress, such as bioavailability and performance effects of scopolamine dosage forms in human subjects, and harmacodynamics of intranasal scopolamine.