The Amyloid Aggregation Study on Board the International Space Station, an Update

“Amyloid Aggregation” is an Italian Space Agency (ASI)-granted project designed to investigate if and how beta amyloid peptides aggregation is affected by microgravity, in the light of a possible professional risk in astronauts on long-lasting space missions. Researchers of the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale del Piemonte Liguria e Valle d'Aosta (IZSPLV) and the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Ist.Sup.San) conceived the project while the Aerospace Logistics Technology Engineering Company (ALTEC) developed the payload. ARGOTEC/Telespazio (UTISS Team) supported safety evaluation, payload manifesting and qualification processes for a safe and efficient delivery, utilization, and integration on board the International Space Station (ISS), and finally recovery of the experimental hardware once returned to Earth. The hardware consisted of 48 special jars containing 6 different time period experimental groups and 2 control groups. In August 2019, during the “BEYOND” mission on board the ISS, astronaut Luca Parmitano activated individual jars according to a defined protocol. At the end of each Incubation Time Periods (ITPs), the samples were transferred in the cold stowage system to stop the aggregation reaction until the analysis after re-entry. Forty-eight identical samples have been prepared and activated in November 2019 on Earth. ALTEC developed jars and packaging for space transportation, qualified and delivered the flight hardware, according to requirements. We here provide an update on the optimization of analytical techniques described in the project specifically intended to warrant an up-to-date, robust and reliable examination of samples that we plan to accomplish in the next months within the proposed timeframe of the project.