Will Explore Regenerative Medicine Onboard The Station

The International Space Station (ISS) Research and Development Conference has announced that Dr. Sanjay Gupta, chief medical correspondent for CNN, will be a keynote speaker at its 8th annual meeting held at the Hyatt Regency in Atlanta, Georgia, July 29 to August 1, 2019. The ISS Research and Development Conference was created to connect U.S. government agencies, commercial enterprises, and academic communities in order to foster new innovations, breakthroughs, and discoveries onboard humankind's unique orbiting laboratory. This event is held in coordination with the ISS National Lab, the American Astronautical Society (AAS), and NASA.

Dr. Gupta is the multiple Emmy award winning chief medical correspondent for CNN. Dr. Gupta, a practicing neurosurgeon, plays an integral role in CNN's reporting on health and medical news for all of CNN's shows domestically and internationally and regularly contributes to CNN.com. His medical training and public health policy experience distinguishes his reporting from war zones and natural disasters, as well as on a range of medical and scientific topics, including the recent Ebola outbreak, brain injury, disaster recovery, health care reform, fitness, military medicine, and HIV/AIDS. In 2016, Dr. Gupta joined the ISS Research and Development Conference, where he interviewed former NASA astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly after the One-Year Mission onboard the ISS to discuss research on the changes that occur in the human body over time in a microgravity environment.

In his 2019 session, Dr. Gupta plans to explore regenerative medicine onboard the ISS, talking with several speakers who are pushing the boundaries of stem cell, tissue chip, and 3D tissue modeling research in microgravity. In recent years, the ISS National Lab has made a profound push toward utilizing the space station to advance research in the area of regenerative medicine. The ISS National Lab has funded multiple stem cell, tissue chip, and biomedical engineering investigations, while partnering with entities like the National Institutes of Health (through its National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences) and the National Science Foundation, which are collectively funding more than $20 million in research in these fields.

"The ISS Research and Development Conference plays a pivotal role in accelerating space station research and technology development and bringing together new entrants in the space community," said Joseph Vockley, Ph.D., ISS National Lab president and chief executive officer. "We are honored to have Dr. Gupta return to the conference to lead an insightful dialogue on the future of regenerative medicine in space."

Registration for the 2019 conference is now open.

(Source: American Astronautical Society news release. Image from file)

FMI: www.issconference.org