In principle, no one ever seriously considered that ETH Zurich could become a competence centre for space biology. Not even Augusto Cogoli, who earned his PhD-degree in organic chemistry in Italy in the early 70s before moving to Switzerland to study biochemistry. The story begins with a coincidence – a "huge" one, as Cogoli says. Thoughtfully, he runs his fingers along the ribs of his beige corduroy trousers and adjusts his glasses. "Where shall I start?" he muses. "Well, in 1974 I finished my biochemistry diploma at ETH and worked for a spell as an assistant before leaving for Israel to spend a postgraduate year at the Weizmann Institute. There I worked on T-lymphocytes, a component of the immune system. That is the first stage of the story". And he continues: "The second begins in 1976 in Zurich at the ETH Laboratory of Biochemistry". Cogoli fixes his gaze on a pile of papers on his desk. "One morning an unopened envelope was lying on the table in the coffee room. No one was interested. So I opened it." It was an announcement from the European Space Agency (ESA) (1) calling for project proposals for experiments to be carried out in space. And this is where part three began: Cogoli's fascination with space. "My father was a hobby astronomer," he says, "and I had always closely followed developments. Once, from Como, I even saw 'Sputnik' – fascinating."

The space biology laboratory in Technopark: the bioreactor in the middle of the picture is the "big brother" of a smaller edition, adapted to use in space. large

Blood letting at Cocoa Beach

The scientific basis was given, the call for projects existed and his keen interest had been awakened – Cogoli just had to take part. But what should his project be? What could be more obvious than to study the growth of T-lymphocytes in space? "The outline of our project met with great interest at ESA. But the funding was anything other than easy," Cogoli remembers. It was only thanks to the strong support of Maurice Cosandey, then president of the Board of the Federal Institutes of Technology (ETH Board, today), that the necessary sum of 100,000 Swiss francs was raised. Part of the money came from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF). The project was refined and an apparatus suited to conditions in space developed for the mission of STS-9/Spacelab 1 (2). A test apparatus was finally catapulted into space on 28th November 1983 on board the space shuttle "Columbia" with four years delay (NASA, the US American space agency, carried out the experiment for ESA). "It was exciting", says Cogoli enthusiastically, and reminisces: "NASA didn't allow us to take blood samples within the confines of the Kennedy Space Center, so we had to take them from one another in a rented apartment in Cocoa Beach".

Lymphocytes are not activated

In space, the samples acted in an unexpected way. "An activated culture of human lymphocytes grows by less than three per cent in microgravity compared to activated samples on Earth," reported the team of researchers around Cogoli in an article in Science (3), which caused a great stir.

In the “space bioreactor” cells are kept alive for longer periods. It was co-developed at ETH by Mecanex, Nyon, and the Institute of Microtechnology at the University of Neuchâtel. So far, it has been sent into space three times. large

The results of their research show that lymphocytes are not activated in a state of weightlessness; in other words, the immune system stands still (in a test-tube) in space. The success of the experiment was the beginning for the space biology team that moved into premises at Technopark (4) ten years ago.

The atmosphere in "Zurich-West" is very special and resembles the awakening of a spin-off company on the scene of biotechnology more than research life on campus. Together with other enterprises, the space biologists rent at no. 1 Technoparkstrasse. The laboratories on the 2nd floor are normal, run-of-the-mill laboratories with coloured bottles labelled DMSO, glycerine or puffer on the shelves and Eppendorfer pipettes on the counters. "This is a similar installation to that carried in the STS-107 flight," explains Cogoli. An event with a sad outcome, as the shuttle "Columbia" exploded immediately prior to the landing manoeuvre on 1st February 2003. Most of the data it carried were destroyed – a loss of around a million Swiss francs (carried in roughly equal parts by ETH Zurich, the Sassari University and NASA). It was a bitter reverse for the team. Just a few months previously, on 15th October 2002, an unmanned FOTON rocket exploded 29 seconds after lift-off from the space station Pleszek in northern Russia. On board it carried material from a students’ projects coached by the space biology team. The project aimed at examining the growth of cartilage cells.

After each experiment most of the 150 components of the space bioreactor have to be dismantled, washed and sterilised. large

Future on ISS

"Since then things have been rather quiet," admits Cogoli. "But the work continues." A manned Sojus flight is planned for autumn 2003 on which ETH students are going to send a new trial installation, a repetition of the lost experiment. The ESA projects are also being continued, as reported in Berlin at the end of March 2003 at the second international congress on "Progress in Space Medicine". It is not yet clear, however, when the next flight will take place. "Naturally, we hope it will be as soon as possible," says Cogoli. Because his industrial partners, for example Centerpulse, are waiting on the results. On the whole, Augusto Cogoli is optimistic. In the latest number of "Bulletin" (a joint publication of the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich) he writes: "The International Space Station (ISS) will be the orbital laboratory of Zurich's space biologists for this decade and the next. We are able to see it every couple of days in the evening or in the morning, as it speeds across the firmament like a shining star from south-west to north-east."