The Rodent Centrifuge Facility - Quad Locker (RCF-QL) offers the largest diameter centrifuge research tool flown on ISS. The RCF-QL is a unique and powerful instrument for novel life and microgravity science research. Techshot's initial targeted application of the proposed innovation is an offering of both the equipment and services associated with flight hardware and integration activities, which are highly desired by NASA-funded scientists. The RCF-QL will enhance NASA's position in exploration research by allowing rodent experiments at Moon or Mars gravity - a long-standing interest of NASA's intramural and extramural gravitational physiology users. Its large cage geometry will allow the investigation of a variety of systems, biological and physical, with larger allowed volume than any other ISS centrifugal research device. And it can provide 1-g control conditions for experiments in stationary hardware such as animal and plant habitats. The RCF-QL will have the additional advantage that Techshot is uniquely qualified to provide these space flight services, just as the company has done for PI's on a variety of flight experiments for the nearly 30 years, including, for example, the Techshot rodent Bone Densitometer, and its artificial-gravity payloads such as the Avian Development Facility and the Multi-use Variable-g Platform.
Techshot sees tremendous potential commercial applications for the Rodent Centrifuge Facility - Quad Locker (RCF-QL) in biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies where life science research holds promise for cell replacement therapies for bioregenerative diseases. Techshot already has been in talks with pharmaceutical companies such as Novartis and Eli Lilly regarding long-term rodent research aboard the ISS. In addition, the company has a long standing relationship with the CASIS, with which it has been working to identify and facilitate industry users of ISS and Techshot spaceflight hardware technologies. The company also already has conducted multiple recent face-to-face discussions with Robert Bigelow of Bigelow Aerospace and Christian Maender of Axiom Space regarding deploying research systems such as the Techshot RCF-QL aboard their respective private commercial orbiting vehicles. Techshot also will commercialize the RCF-QL by incorporating it into the company's spaceflight service catalog it markets to other federal agencies such as NIH, NSF, and DoD.
More »