Two NC-Grown Tissue Technologies Head to the International Space Station This Year

WINSTON-SALEM, NC – August 10, 2026 – Regenerative medicine researchers in North Carolina have spent the past two years building human tissue in a place no hospital can offer: microgravity. This summer, that work reaches its next milestone. 

A team supported by the Regenerative Medicine Engine in North Carolina and funded through NASA’s In-Space Production Applications (InSPA) program has finished flight hardware evaluations for a set of engineered liver constructs and is targeting a launch aboard SpX-35 in August to test them aboard the International Space Station. The constructs build on a 1 cm by 1 cm tissue sample that won the 2021 Vascular Tissue Challenge; the team has since scaled the technology up to 1 cm by 3 cm constructs and is working toward integrating sensors into certified spaceflight hardware. 

A related project already reached orbit this year. Funded by the ISS National Laboratory’s CASIS Igniting Innovation award, a team used microgravity aboard SpX-34 in May to study how gene expression changes in tumor organoids grown from colorectal cancer patient cells, in search of new chemotherapy targets. Ground studies and nearly all of the mission’s verification testing were completed before launch. The project also produced a partnership: the team signed a memorandum of understanding with QIAGEN to establish a Biomarker Center of Excellence, aimed at creating a standardized, regulatory-aligned workflow for patient-derived organoids. 

Separately, the liver construct team has partnered with Auxilium Biotechnologies, another NASA InSPA awardee, to evaluate 3D printing of liver and kidney constructs in microgravity using Auxilium’s DLP Advanced Manufacturing Platform. Early feasibility testing flew aboard the Ax-2 mission, with results presented at the TERMIS 2025 conference, and the collaboration is now targeting its own flight to test small-scale liver and kidney constructs. 

Both projects are still early stage — each carries a technology readiness level of 3 on the scale the Engine uses, or a 4 on NASA’s separate scale — but both already have a commercial path in mind: one toward a bridge therapy for transplant patients, the other toward earthbound disease models that drug companies could use to test new cancer treatments. 

About RegMIC: RegMIC is an industry-led organization dedicated to accelerating the development and commercialization of regenerative medicine therapies. The organization convenes industry leaders, researchers, and innovators to address critical challenges and advance the field. For more information, visit https://remdo.com/regmic/.

About ReMDO:  The RegenMed Development Organization (ReMDO) is a 501(c)3 non-profit with a mission to help deliver on the promise of regenerative medicine by advancing research to de-risk technologies, promoting progress of biomanufacturing scale-up and automation to make technologies more affordable, and speeding up the translation to clinical practice. For more information, visit https://remdo.org/.