Startups Offer Range of Innovative Space Health Technologies

Eleven startups with innovative health care technology solutions for challenges presented by space exploration showcased their capabilities during Starburst’s Space-H Space Health Accelerator program’s demo day on January 22.

Space-H is a collaboration between Starburst, the Translational Research Institute for Space Health, NASA’s Human Research Program, Methuselah Foundation and Microsoft, aimed at supporting emerging technologies that will further enable spaceflight.

During the 13-week program, the chosen startups received support for maturing their technologies and entering the space market with their health care solutions.

“There are already many items in your house that are the fruits of [research and development] that were initially targeted for space exploration, and the future will likely be no different, but it comes at a time when we’re confronting strange emergencies and new threats to our health globally,” said Kate Ludicrum, Space-H program director. “As we look ahead to a robust and healthy future in space, I’m also very excited by the potential that these companies are bringing to our species here at home.”

While the startups were assisted with developing their technologies for the space market, many companies’ capabilities can be used on Earth in the medical field. Some of the solutions have even garnered attention from the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. armed forces for warfighter health care.

The 11 companies who presented during Starburst’s inaugural Space-H virtual demo day included:

• Innsightful

Focusing on the toll that stressful situations take on people, Farzad Ehsani, co-founder and CEO of Innsightful, developed a wearable mental health monitor that measures stress.

In an interview with SIGNAL Media, Ehsani explained how stress, anxiety and depression issues go untreated because there hasn’t been a way to measure mental health like physical illnesses, especially for people like astronauts who bear the weight of critical responsibilities.

The wearable biosensors, in a watch-like style, measure heart rate, temperature, motion and galvanic skin responses to determine stress levels. When the continuous monitoring picks up on abnormal stress levels, the artificial intelligence component suggests ways to reduce stress via a connected phone app.

The technology can detect patterns and signatures of other mental health issues such as depression and PTSD. Besides NASA, Ehsani said different branches of the U.S. military are interested in Innsightful’s just-in-time therapy approach for warfighter wellness.

“We just learn to ignore our pain and everything else if we think there’s a higher purpose,” Ehsani said. “Our job is just to bring attention to it and make sure that they have an awareness of it.”

• LinkGevity

Sisters Serena Kern-Libera and Carina Kern co-founded this drug discovery company almost two years ago to combat age-related diseases. While antibiotics treat a range of infectious diseases, LinkGevity’s Anti-Necrotics are meant to inhibit necrosis, the uncontrolled death of cells, tissues and organs. The sisters are studying the common pathological pathways of different diseases to find the origins of aging and combat the triggers for deterioration.

“LinkGevity’s groundbreaking Anti-Necrotic technology addresses the long-standing challenge of unprogrammed cell death necrosis, opening new doors for treating accelerated aging in space, advancing bioengineering and improving cryopreservation,” said Elizabeth Reynolds, managing director of Starburst’s U.S. business.

LinkGevity’s initial focus is on kidney disease, but Kern-Libera emphasized that Anti-Necrotics can be in many ways in space to benefit astronauts on long missions, and they aid in the fields of tissue engineering and cryopreservation.

“Mapping all of these pathways is akin to the Google Maps of human biology,” Kern told SIGNAL Media in an interview. “You can look at all of those changes, and you can look at the changes arising simultaneously. And when you take that systems approach, then you can really start to pinpoint potential interventions that are likely to have a significant outcome.”

• Ejenta

The San Francisco-based platform for autonomous remote health monitoring has an exclusive license agreement with NASA for an intelligent agent platform called Brahms.

Rachna Dhamija, founder and CEO of Ejenta, said the intelligent agents continuously monitor data from several medical and consumer devices that measure health and wellness. The agents can detect abnormal conditions and provide support by advising the crew on next steps.

“We’re device agnostic, but the system is also designed to be vehicle agnostic and communications agnostic, so that we can follow a space flight participant and monitor their health across the mission, regardless of their vehicle or their location,” Dhamija explained.

In addition to helping astronauts, Ejenta’s technology is being developed for the U.S. Army to monitor the health of soldiers in austere environments.

• Nahlia

The NASA-funded company’s CEO, Jayant Menon, is a neurosurgeon with a specialty in brain-machine interfaces. To aid with decision-making in extreme environments, Nahlia’s solution is an active-listening cognitive prosthetic that dynamically modulates the auditory cortex.

“Real-time sound perception analysis of the soundscape of speech patterns, language, auditory context will help with processing what needs to be done and who needs to know it and when,” Menon said. “So, simplifying the soundscape will increase situational awareness and block noisy information and bring clarity from chaos.”

Menon said the wearable cognitive prosthetic has been developed and tested at West Point, and his team has been in contact with the Defense Health Agency for investment.

• Synapsis Medical Technologies

This startup is developing a heart health and fitness optimization tool via hemodynamic monitoring. Through monitoring blood flow dynamics, physical health markers like cardiac stability and mental health markers like cognitive function, psychological stress and hormonal changes can be evaluated, CEO Preetam Anbukarasu said.

Synapsis’ solution to assess health outside of a hospital and beyond Earth is a wearable, noninvasive hemodynamic monitor that looks almost like a watch.

• NaNotics

The California Bay Area-based biotechnology platform company has developed the first injectable therapeutic for sepsis.

Founder of NaNotics Louis Hawthorne explained how the conditions in space increase the risk of sepsis and cancer. Unlike targeting cells like other drugs, NaNots target the soluble factors dissolved in blood, which are often the drivers of disease, Hawthorne said. NaNots are injected and work to suppress the disease and its progression.

• Esperto Medical

To measure vital signs in a noninvasive way, this company has designed a wearable calibration- and cuff-free solution. The advanced technology comes down to measuring blood pressure without tight cuffs and arterial catheters. Alaina Brinley Rajagopal introduced resonance sonomanometry, a method of continuous measurement of not only blood pressure but also arterial stiffness, arterial dimensions, blood velocity, cardiac output, respirations and pulse. Resonance sonomanometry involves an audio frequency sound stimulus that creates a resonance in the artery wall.

“In space, there are a variety of different use cases, from looking into gravitationally based disorders like orthostatic syncope or G-induced loss of consciousness, or G-LOC, to cardiovascular fitness monitoring to look at astronaut readiness,” Rajagopal said.

• Mitrix

Mitrix CEO Tom Benson presented his solution to age-related diseases: mitochondrial transportation. With a focus on longevity, Benson and his team have studied mitochondrial decline via mitochondrial DNA. As people age, errors in mitochondrial DNA increase, Benson explained.

The transplant works by injecting large amounts of mitochondria into the bloodstream, and the goal now is to develop a bioreactor that grows mitochondria in large quantities. Benson said his company is set to start human safety trials.

• Space Redi

This software company is creating S.P.O.K., an autonomous risk manager that can help operators predict and manage complex risks before, during and after missions in space. CEO Gary Schneider explained that the system features a remote data collection system that gathers information from real-time sensors, incident databases and engineering documentation. Then it can characterize the data into risk profiles, and artificial intelligence and machine learning are used to assess the risks and communicate the consequences of potential decisions during a mission.

• GattaCo

Mahmoud Zubaidi, co-founder and CEO of GattaCo, explained the difficulties of managing chronic illness without frequent access to a hospital or lab. GattaCo created a technology called the A-PON Plasma Separator for patients to draw their blood from home, process it and send it to a lab themselves.

According to Zubaidi, the A-PON device was successfully tested on SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission.

• Delta Biosciences

This chemical company is tackling the issue of drug degradation in space. According to Dominykas Milasius of Delta Biosciences, research shows that only half of the medication available on the International Space Station would last through a three-year Mars mission.

Delta Biosciences has an accelerated molecular discovery engine that can test droplets of chemical molecules trying to inhibit a particular protein, and Milasius said his team has a list of 30 molecules that apply to space radiation.

Next year, Delta Biosciences is launching a validation experiment on the International Space Station, evaluating the degradation of 30 different molecules over three years to develop ways to preserve medicine in space.